Covenant

Indiwind

We live in a residential property,  originally back in 1968 when the land was sold to build the properties (6 in a row) the land owners put a covenant in to say no pigs or poultry to be kept on on the plots or any election of a building to house such animals. Not huge gardens at all but our neighbour next but 1 has decided to put a cockerel in his garden and it crows all day long!
It has made our lives a misery and we can't even enjoy our garden or home. How does a covenant get enforced? Someone has told us they are not worth the paper they are written on

Help please 

flaneurs_lobster

Just a cockerel, on its own? 

What for, decorative purposes? Odd sort of pet, they make for pretty poor eating too.

flaneurs_lobster

Has anyone had a word with the neighbour about their noisy bird? Any chance they'll just be reasonable and wring the bird's neck send it to live in the country?

Best to try the friendly chat method first because the next step is getting legalled-up and means you won't be on each other's Xmas card list for the foreseeable (and it costs).

A restrictive covenant is certainly enforceable by anyone who gains benefit from it, like you.  The first step would be to consult a property lawyer with a copy of the paperwork to make sure it's kosher. After that it'll be a letter from your brief stating your intention to seek an Injunction then the injunction itself.

Section62

Section 12 of the Allotments Act 1950 might be an issue for enforcing the covenant -  make sure you get good legal advice from someone who understands this area of the law before doing anything else down this avenue.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/14/31/section/12

It may be more of an environmental health issue.

doodling

Hi,

A cockrel is not a hen so the Allotments Act won't be an issue here (and even if it was, the act requires that the hens / rabbits are kept so as not to cause nuisance).

Apart from  a polite chat with the neighbour, the noise from cockrels has, depending on location, been found to be a nuisance (in the legal sense) so if you want some kind of enforcement then I would try the noise nuisance angle with the local council.

Trying to enforce the covenant is likely to be more complex than just addressing it as a noise nuisance issue.

Of course, once you move beyond a polite request to your neighbour then you will have a neighbour dispute which you will need to declare should you decide to sell in the future.

Yorkie1

+1 to everything doodling wrote.

david29dpo

To answer your question, covenants are only enforcable by the person who wrote it, plus, they will no longer be interested.
So yes, not worth the paper its writen on.

Bigphil1474

Agree with others. Forget the covenant. Contact your local Environmental Health team or Anti-social behaviour team - whichever deals with domestic nuisance issues.

Section62

david29dpo said:

To answer your question, covenants are only enforcable by the person who wrote it, plus, they will no longer be interested.
So yes, not worth the paper its writen on.

That isn't correct.

Covenants are enforcable by the beneficiary of the covenant.  The exact wording of each covenant has to be checked to see who the beneficiaries are, and then assess whether enforcement is possible and likely.

WIAWSNB

If you haven't done so, write a log of all the cockling, time, duration, level. And ask any other affected neighb's to ditto.
And make recordings.
No-one will act without evidence.

FreeBear

flaneurs_lobster said:

Has anyone had a word with the neighbour about their noisy bird? Any chance they'll just be reasonable and wring the bird's neck send it to live in the country?

The local fox will take care of the chicken before too long. Neighbour used to keep quails (noisy little things). The local foxes picked them off one by one.