We've just purchased a house. It's on the outskirts of a town, in a development from the 60's or so. (so, not out in the countryside; quite clearly defined fence borders between fences. supposedly)
When we were viewing the house, we could see that the end of the garden was obscured by foliage/ bushes because the elderly couple who had lived here before hadn't been able to maintain it any longer so had only had the lawn mowed. Fair enough. But, we weren't really able to see the back fence well, we could only see the fences of the neighbours to the right and left, which seemed approximately along the same line, and assumed our back fence was along this line. It wasn't entirely clear, but this week after having moved in last week, we've been doing some clearing back there.
Land registry which we have copies of shows that is where our fence should be as well- all of our back gardens should be divided from the houses behind us by essentially one long fence, like this:
----
Well, our neighbours behind us evidently took the time between the elderly couple passing away and the children sorting out the property to erect a new fence. The back fences now look like this:
-- ----
-
If that makes sense.
The back fence is at least a metre into our (admittedly large) back garden, probably more. The difference is a section of garden large enough that our neighbours use theirs for an allotment type area, then have their lawn in front.
To top it off, the people who have put this fence up are a semi-detached house, so their garden isn't as wide as ours. So, not only do we have fence in our garden, but there is a little alley area on one side of it full of foliage we can't reach to prune anything, including a small tree which appears to be ours as well. There appears to be some bodged chicken wire or something leading from this new fence to the next fence which is the one the real fence should be aligned with, if that makes sense.
So. Where do we start with this? I realise we're meant to man up and approach them over it, and I will once I get some ideas for it, but I'm sure it won't end well. Someone who budges their fence that far into someone else's garden isn't going to be the type to say 'oh oops, we didn't mean to do that! We'll put that right quick smart!'
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
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Boundary/fence dispute
22 replies
GreenEggsAndNichts · 19/03/2013 16:45
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