Buying a freehold house but part of garden (15ft strip) is leased to council– anyone had experience?

tooldle

newmember676 said:

tooldle said:

Access point for a culvert perhaps? We have a culvert under our garden (2m below surface). The stream bed (as was) is owned by the council. The route cuts across our garden so a very narrow strip is owned by the council (around 1m wide x 20m in length). The whole garden is enclosed and we have full access to the entirety. Something similar in your case maybe?

Thank you for your words. Could you please tell me how your experience has been so far? Since when have you owned this house? What complications have you had to face? Has the resale value of the house been affected? Have you faced any issues with remortgaging? What has your overall feeling and experience been because of the council’s involvement? Sorry for asking so many questions at once, but I would be very thankful if you could share your experiences. Thank you.

We’ve not had any issues. We have owned the property for just over 4 years. The previous owner built the property in the late 70’s. The property was sold to us by the executor who provided a declaration stating no issues. We don’t have a mortgage and did buy very cheaply but this was solely to do with the state of the property. It needed a full refurb internally and had some other issues to resolve. The only involvement I can envisage from the council would be to use the access to the culvert. However, there are other access points (both up and downstream from us) that would be far easier to access, assuming a blockage. In the event that machinery was needed to be brought onto the land, it would be a major undertaking ( steep slopes and no existing vehicle access to the rear garden) and would likely cause significant damage. In our circumstances, the council would need to reinstate our garden. Their strip is very narrow and they cannot get to it without impinging on our land. We know them to be a good as their word on this having suffered an issue with a soak away in an adjoining street. The soak away was diverted into the culvert in our time here. The benefit to us being it stopped our garden being inundated by surface water run off from the adjacent street. The only thing I would say about the council is that they move very slowly. Quick to investigate an issue and very slow to resolve an issue. As a professional engineer I’m not phased by these things.
Are you any clearer as to what interest the council have in the land? Did the lease start at the same time as your intended purchase being built? In our case, the land was ‘leftover’ from building of a small group of houses in the 1930’s. The council retained ownership of the land until it was sold to the previous owner in the 1970’s. At the time of selling the land was divided into three parcels. On our purchase two of the titles were merged meaning we now have two parcels of land, separated by the strip owned by the council.