shunty

can anyone help:

My garage acts as a boundary wall onto my neighbours back garden. To cut a long story short we have had "other" issues & now I have discovered that his car-port is attached to the side of my garage with a timber batton & I am not happy. I hadn't spotted this before, even though I have been in the house for over a year.

He bought the house new 4 years ago, I bought mine 16 months ago, there was nothing mentioned regarding any previous agreements either written or verbal by the solicitors.
Where do I stand legally, can I get him to take it down etc??

any help greatly appreciated before I go any futher.

cheers

shunty

Dave T-S

On a slight tangent, but relevant, when you come to sell your house you will have to fill in a property questionnaire, and there is a section asking if you have had any disputes with your neighbours and asking for details.

If the answer is yes, this can make the property unsaleable depending on the dispute (if you live next to an axe murderer someone else might not want to ).

If the answer is yes but you reply no, this can put you in a breach of contract situation where your purchaser may be due damages.

Just worth pointing out before this goes potentially pear shaped, as many boundary issues do

shunty

cheers Dave,
I suppose that would only become liable if the original matter went to court.....which this probably will.

anyone had this problem before ? what was the outcome ??

There is obviously a story behind this & if there hadn't been any prior issues then I would never normally bother with something like this....

shunty

Dave T-S

Shunty
It doesn't have to go to court to be relevant unfortunately. It's a declaration, which then becomes a breach of contract if the truth is not declared.

For example, your potential purchaser asks if you have had any disputes with your neighbour. If you answer yes, his kids run over my garden, his dog is always barking, he parks in front of my garage, we had a dispute over our boundary etc then that may well put people off buying but is at least the truth.

If the above is true, but you answer that you have had had no disputes, he buys your house then the neighbour gives him hell for the above reasons, and the purchaser then finds out from the neighbour the other side that you were always at each others throats, then it's breach of contract time.

This is a very potential minefield these days

camk

Therefore I'd be very careful about starting an issue based on an attachment to your garage. Ask yourself is it worth the potential hassle later, is it impacting your quality of life as the failure to sell your house later surely will.

Cheers
Cammy

speedking

Just tell him that you're thinking of modifying your garage and that he must remove his fixings from it asap, because you can't be responsible for what your builders might do.

PS The sneaky bit is that you're not really thinking of modifying your garage at all

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

Depends what your deeds say & whether your garage is inside the legal boundary.

However, I would suggest that your garage forms part of the boundary & for the relevant law regarding boundaries, the middle of the wall is taken as the dividing line between two properties, therefore he is perfectly entitled to stick something on it. You do have rights if it is his intention to do so now, but its only down to having to inform you that he intends to carry out the work. He has to ensure that no damage happens to the wall for further work undertaken.

Whilst it is annoying that he "dare" have a lean-to against your garage, its in his property & he is probably entitled to do so unless it breaches planning regs.

Interesting things happen with regards digging footings & some other things but the "Party Wall Act" is not really a letigeous act, only encouraging people to notify their affected neighbour in case of works intended to be carried out, rather than forcing actions to be taken in case they don't.

Why do I know? Well looking at ways to stop my pesky neighbours building yellow painted building on the side of my lovely 200yr old flint house That & how to get the same neighbours to remove poxy smelly stable that abuts both my garage and a dividing wall. Nothing I can do [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

frisby

Try the following link.

http://www.safety.odpm.gov.uk/bregs/pwact/index.htm

Or type in Party Walls Act into a search engine for loads of links.

laters

stu

shunty

thanks for the replies...
PTMW - your reply is extremely useful, & looks like I'm bu55ered then:sad:

cheers

shunty

shunty

frisby, cheers, really useful link

stil bu55ered though

shunty