Neighour's extension on my land

nanker

I would want all you have suggested including your surveyor's fees and £500 on top to cover incidental expenses and considerable inconvenience. That will hurt him and give you some satisfaction.

I think he will agree as he may feel that demolition may be a real possibility. Good luck

greenface

Just fix your fence/gate and sort out the boundaries properly let him render/paint what you can see to make it more pleasing to you. How much are the surveyours fees ? No need for compensation for suffering etc. Hope it all works out well .
Greenface

lostinrates

Can you really accept the compensation and leave the neighbour with no come back ith out the freeholder signing this off?

planning_officer

VictorMeldew wrote: »

Planning_officer - thanks for your advice again. I still want to complain to the council and eventually the ombudsman. This wouldn't mean that my neighbour would have to apply for retro-spective planning permission would it? I don't want to antagonise my neighbour now that we seem to approaching some sort of agreement.

No, it's unlikely to mean that - and if he's willing to sort something out amicably, it's far more preferable in my opinion to do it like that, i.e. swap some land or something. Not sure whether asking for your surveyors fees is reasonable - perhaps someone else could advise on that point? Citizens Advice Bureau can be pretty good at that sort of advice.

I suppose in terms of complaining to the Council, you could mention that the application was validated without a site plan, therefore there was nothing showing how close to the boundary the extension would be (you can't scale accurately off a 1:1250 location plan, like the one that was submitted - a site plan should be at a scale of either 1:500 or 1:200). Also, the explanations of the case officer in his emails to you were somewhat contradictory: first he said the single storey rear extension was permitted development (which is completely incorrect), then he seemed to retract that and say he wasn't sure when it was built, but in any event, it was too minor to take any action - whilst the result is the same (i.e. no action), he could have been a lot clearer!

Also, I'd mention his explanation of why the two storey extension was permitted - because you'd "already reduced light to your rear garden by building your own extension, therefore your extension couldn't prejudice the ability of your neighbour to extend his property" (or something along those lines) - which is utterly ridiculous - that's not a material planning consideration!

hethmar

Sounds good Vic, did he mention the parents interest at all?

I think you should definitely get the surveyors fees off the neighbour plus whatever you feel compensates for the loss of your piece of land - also get him to pay for the new declaration of the boundary.

VictorMeldew

I think I'll leave it up to the surveyor to work out what's fair. I'm just happy that the whole thing is drawing to a close without the need for court action/solicitors. My wife and I have been stressed enough over the past few weeks. I can't imagine how horrible it would be to string it out for years.

Thanks for the complaint letter tips planning_officer, I'll certainly be putting those points in!

SquatNow

I don't get it? Why not just tell the neighbour you want him to knock it down?

Seriously now, push this f*cker for everything... as well as the bit of land he has abandoned, you'de like your garden to be a foot or 2 wider and him to pay all the costs including the surveyor and land registry costs.

Some extra garden is reasonable since he has reduce the usability of a part of your by shading it.

If he isn't prepared to give you that, well i suppose he can always knock the extension down can't he.

The guy has realised you have him over a barrel... he isn't going to argue. He already knows if he goes to court he WILL lose.

VictorMeldew

I don't think my position is quite as strong as that squatnow. If it did go to court it can go either way even in the most apparently black and white cases. My initial reaction, and just about everyone elses when I've told them what's happened has been - 'if it's on your land, then he hasn't got a leg to stand on' etc. Unforunately this just isn't the case, even though it should be.

I really don't feel that I should be left out of pocket, or in any worse a position though when I come to sell my house. It certainly isn't my fault he built it where he did. I'll see what the chartered surveyor thinks though (I'm going to ask him to mediate for us).


I found this website that explains the problems with boundary issues really well :

http://www.boundary-problems.co.uk/framecosts.htm

Mods - please remove the above link if it isn't allowed for some reason.

hethmar

Thats exactly right Vic, our horrendous matter has gone on 3 years now. Its absolutely black and white - we have everything on our side but he still continues to argue and string it out.

marybishop

Victor - you're doing the right thing by trying to resolve it amicably even though it doesn't seem fair that you should have to meet him halfway. If you can avoid a dispute that is by far the best thing as boundary disputes can go on for years and cost a fortune plus it could cause problems on re-sale.