Fencing - What to do?

[FaginsGal]

Posting here for traffic and hopefully advice.

We live in a row of houses, built in 1965. At the end of our back gardens runs a fence which we have assumed is the property of the house behind us. This house is in a street around the corner and runs at right angles to us, so the length of it's garden runs along the back of our houses (hope that makes sense).

The fence in question is now rotting and starting to disintegrate, so one of our neighbours spoke to the owner who we thought owns the fence (she bought the house a couple of years ago), to ask about any repairs she might have planned, only for her to say she doesn't own the fence. That there is in fact a strip of land that runs along her garden on which this fence stands, and this strip was owned by the builder of our houses (who we think was the now defunct Bryant house builder). This strip of land has a pipe running along it underground that was put in to divert water from land that houses were built on in the 1970's or 80's, on a hill further up the main road, and the pipe leads down to the river. None of the owners in our road knew anything about this strip of land, it has always been, for us, a fence dividing her property from ours.

This strip of land belongs to no one apparently. The lady whose land it ajoins cannot use it, or build on it and she has no responsibility for the fence that the builder erected to fence off our houses from the land. She has to allow access to Severn Trent if needed, but other than that knows nothing else about it. To complicate matters more, there have been newer properties built further down the road between us and the river, where this pipe is supposed to lead, and their position is such that they must have been built OVER the ground the pipe runs along. So what happens if this pipe fractures?

The houses in our row have all been bought and resold a few times, of the owners that live here now, none of us have had this raised by solicitors when we bought our homes.

Sorry this is so long but didn't want to drip feed. Now, we are going to meet up and discuss ways of replacing the fence in the best cost effective way we can (even though it doesn't belong to any of us) this includes the lady who lives behind us and who is in no way obstructive or difficult, but we are worried about this pipe that we know nothing about, and also about erecting the fence on land which does not belong to us – and this is the only option if it is to be replaced in a uniform way as it originally was.

Hope that makes sense. Does anyone have any experience of a situation such as this? And is it something our respective solicitors should have found out when they did searches ? Or are we over thinking and worrying unnecessarily?

Thanks for reading

Isn't this something Land Registry would identify?

Have any of you checked Land Registry yet? It would record who owns the land and fence and remove the uncertainty.

If there were covenants on this woman's property in relation to this pipe etc they should be there too.

After so many years wouldn’t the land belong to that house anyway? Access might have to be given but since nobody else uses it and it’s fenced into her garden

I thought this was going to be about foils and epees and white suits with mesh face masks!

On a serious note though, if the land belongs to "no one" then I believe if the pipe fractured it would be the responsibility of Severn Trent as you're only responsible for pipework up to your border. (My mum had an issue with a pipe in her cellar - was covered by insurance but then it transpired the fault was actually underneath the pavement and therefore outside the border of her property and land so they had to fix it for free anyway).

At the end of our back gardens runs a fence which we have assumed is the property of the house behind us

And there is your issue. One should never presume when it comes to land and ownership. The pipe owning neighbour needs to dig out her land registry deeds, you and your neighbours need yours and then you need to work out who owns what.

I live in a detached house in a corner at 45 Deg angle (ish) to my neighbours. Different sections belong to each of us and there is no real straightforward way of knowing. The deeds are the only way.

www.boundary-problems.co.uk/boundary-problems/fences.html

You don’t have to erect a fence or wall

Thank you everyone. I have just checked the Land registry for our property and it shows our boundaries and the long garden in question - and low and behold it also shows a narrow strip between the long garden running parallel to the back gardens and our gardens. It has no access points marked on the plan, as it runs between her garden and the back of 7 gardens plus half a garden at one end and half a garden at the other in our road. It is all very odd.

The reason we have all assumed this fence belongs to the garden at the back is because it is on the right hand side of her garden....all of us have responsibility for the fence to the right of our garden, so ther seems no reason to assume it would be different for any other home owner in our locale - not that we've all thought about it in any depth before. Fence has been OK up to now, so why would we?

Have you got the actual plans for your house? There should be an indication on there as to which boundary is yours. Where those houses built after yours? If so it might be that that fence was also your boundary (as well as my sharing boundaries with numerous neighbours I also own the boundary that runs along the school field at the side/back.

I have downloaded the plan from the land registry but it just outlines our whole property in red on all four sides

Just found this on the helpful link posted above, so I have no idea how to even start finding out what boundary is which:-

If the only boundary description available to you is a Land Registry title plan then you must bear in mind that:

by law it shows only the general position of the boundary;
by law it is based on the Ordnance Survey map;
by law the Ordnance Survey map does not define property boundaries;
in practice there are accuracy limitations to Ordnance survey maps, and issues of map interpretation, that make them unsuitable as a basis for determining the exact line of a boundary.

There is no law which states you own a fence to the left or right of your property, unless it's in your deeds. My Nan had this problem and assumed the fence to her right was hers. But as it wasn't on the deeds, the fence belongs to both owners equally.

To the bottom of my garden there is what is known as baron land. It's not owned by us, nor the owners of the horses in the field opposite. We have around 6 foot between our fence, and that of the horses. The horses constantly trample over her fence, and as a result they nosey over our fence looking for food, and have gradually started to push our fence over. We looked into who owned this bit of land to see if we could do something to stop the horses coming right up to our fence, and was told by the council it's baron land, so owned by no-one. So now when I'm cooking I have horses looking at me. It's nice in the summer when you can actually see them, but I but unnerving in the winter when you just catch a glimpse of them in the shadows! We can't do anything about them, as the land is neither ours, the horse owners, or the council 🤷‍♀️

There should be little triangles next to the boundary which is yours. I can't remember on which of the million pages of paperwork it was on though. I think it was a different one to the one that just shown which bit of land belonged to us.