Legal fence question

[TeamCuthbert]

This is hypothetical. There is a block of houses in a street. Each house is responsible for the fence on the left side of their property. One of the houses has a dog. The owners maintain a 6 foot fence on the left side of their property, as per the rules.

However, the owners of the house next door do not. They rent the house to tenants. The fence has fallen down and has so much ivy on it that it needs a proper repair. In the meantime, the dog can just wander over to to next door.

If the dog bit one of their tenants, who would be liable? The person who owns the dog or the owners of the house who do not maintain their fence?

Surely all that's need then is a gentle reminder that if anyone is injured by the crumbling wall then landlord is liable?

Needed*

@Sparklfairy I’ve tried that. They don’t care.

Then why would you think they'd care about an imaginary dog hypothetically biting someone?!

Because the wall is falling into this lady’s garden, rather than theirs.

You can report a dangerous wall to the council here: www.gov.uk/report-dangerous-building-structure

The most they can do is write a letter or two to the landlord, but if these go ignored they won't do much else.

They are also invalidating their insurance by not maintaining it to a safe standard iirc.

Bottom line is you can't force them to actually do anything until the wall actually collapses and/or injures someone, which is stupid but that's the way it is unfortunately.