Boundary dispute

[Corono]

Posted here for traffic.

We have a shared drive, moved in recently and want to redo our part of the drive. However the current next doors drive extends up to the edge of our garage. The garages have a small gap between them and the land registry just shows a straight 50/50 split. So we've lost space. There is two different types of concrete their currently. The neighbour says that's the divide the split in the concrete.

It makes parking on our side drive very tight as we've lost c. 6 inches of space.

To redo the drive we would need to cut back the concrete belonging to the neighbour.

Is this allowed? Don't want to fall out with them but don't want to pay £000s for a drive that's going to be down years and not get the full benefit of what's rightly ours.

If she complains then just ask for a copy of her deeds to compare it to!
When I commented earlier I must have missed where you had already spoken to her.

Just crack on with then and tell her to complain to he council 👌

Does she go out to work at all??

What has the council got to do with a boundary dispute?

Have the two driveways always been laid like that or did the neighbour redo their drive at some point?

I have experience of this kind of situation with my elderly dad. He moved into a house and about a week afterward the next door neighbour erected a fence along the boundary of their respective drives which took 3 feet off my Dad's driveway entry making it very hard indeed to enter and exit the driveway without scraping the car. He did it very early in the morning before anyone was up. It's called a 'land grab' I think.
And he refused to take it down; said the previous owner had said he could do it.
My dad wasn't able to just put it all back, or even touch the fence, he had to take civil proceedings out which took well over a year, went to a first hearing at court and cost him £12,000. Plus, although he 'won' because once all the reports and evidence were presented, the Judge saw that a young bloke had clearly thought he was dealing with an old man who wouldn't fight back, my Dad still also had to pay half the costs of taking it to court and all the speciliast surveyor and mediation reports. The fence was taken down and made good by the neighbour. It cost him his marriage and the house is now up for sale.
it was the most stressful time i can remember.
So before you go taking back or cutting up what you think is yours, be careful, OP!!!

No nothing to do with the council but as she already moaned to them about the fence...

Personally as she has form, I would take the deeds to a split or with photos of the existing layout. Once confirmed you are indeed missing the 6 inches, I would ask the solicitor draw up a letter stating your intent.

I would speak to your neighbour personally, knowing you are in the right, and if she makes a fuss, get the solicitor send the letter to her. Hopefully she will get the message that you mean business know a bit more than she does!

Yes to getting your builder to do it with a wet saw and make it look neat.

FWIW our old neighbour though he owned our back garden, despite a wall clearly marking our boundary in accordance to the deeds and land registry. If he had owned what he claimed, we wouldn’t have been able to enter or exit our back door. I said he was welcome to the land if he wanted it, considering I wouldn’t then have to empty the huge septic tank beneath it and maintain the soak away - funnily enough he never mentioned it again! Some people are bonkers.

Would it not depend on when the neighbours driveway was laid? I thought they could claim possession if it's been down for 13 years.

We had this exact issue in a house we moved in to. I just reinstated the boundary as per the deeds. I told the neighbour on the morning I was doing it and cracked on. I took my contract plan with me for reference.

Well I'd love to join in, but can't see any pics

I would give her the option of... continuing to argue, being proven wrong by the deeds then being asked to remove the offending six inch strip of concrete at her expense (or you will do it and she will be given the bill).

Or, stopping arguing now, and you will remove the offending strip at your expense and no more will be said about the matter.

We want block paving, she has reinforced concrete and a gap is needed between the two for drainage. So sadly that won't work

Could you use permeable block paving which lets water drain between the blocks?

I can see why you've assumed that but it was just the way they laid it at the time, aesthetics don't overrule the deeds
Except when they do. Be very careful OP. It may well be yours, it may well be on the deeds but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t now have a right to it. If she’s saying ‘50 years’ and the drive has indeed been that way for that long she might have a right. Adverse Possession usually has to have the land in question surrounded and enclosed in some way and have been used without the ‘permission’ of the owner by the claimee. I’ve been through a boundary ‘dispute’ like this and although I won’t bore you with the details it turned out alright for us in the end but could have so easily been very different like MsSweary Dad. The first step I took was to consult a specialist solicitor, it was well worth it and the initial talk and advice with him was only about GBP 150.00. Probably saved us a lot of money in the long run.

@MsSweary who's marriage? Your dads or his neighbours. I'm hopping his neighbours!!!

The neighbours marriage went down the pan not my Dad's! Yes, poetic justice.

Put unlike a wall or fence the joining of two bits of concrete doesn't mark a border does it?

I would clarify that legally - after all each neighbour can still drive over/stand on each other's driveway you can't evidence that it is being exclusively used by just the one neighbour...

In my Dad's case - eventually the boundary line was redrawn to reflect how it is now because of some kind of anomaly with the original boundary lines on the land registry - honestly it got very technical and the measurements and everything had to be done again but the end point was that my Dad was right - the guy just took what he wanted and underestimated who he was dealing with. Made my Dad ill in the process so I'm glad his DW kicked his ass out.

But just to press home my point - it ALL had to be paid for and it was really unpleasant and once each were committed to their position it became like a stand off until my Dad couldn't afford not to see it through because the bloke threatened him that he'd cut my Dad's right of way completely off by building the fence right to the end of the drive.

Thanks at @Judashascomeintosomemoney what would I google for that type of solicitor?

MsSweary what an utter bastard doing that to your dad. Glad he got some comeuppance.

Corono we just called one of our local Solicitor offices (had been recommended for other matters) and asked them if they dealt with it, they happened to have a guy who did and he was great. Obviously the first step should always be talk to your neighbours but it sounds like you’re not going to get anywhere doing that unfortunately. It was same for us, the guy in question (a developer) had already almost bankrupted one neighbour with a boundary dispute that went on for years, threatened another with court action because they’d built a garage partially on a ransom strip he’d created that their original solicitor unfortunately didn’t notice and so we went straight to the solicitor before even speaking to him. Good luck

Land Registry deeds never show actual boundaries, just some approximation. I think this caveat is actually on the plans. You may have to raise a boundary dispute and have an agreed or determined boundary. Also, as a PP said, your neighbours probably now have rights of adverse posession. This is something I would have thought should have been turned up by your pre-purchase survey.

OP, put down the same concrete for a foot and then put up a fence right down the middle.you can still put your block paving up after that.

Then tell her it's been like that on the plans for 50 years.

Put unlike a wall or fence the joining of two bits of concrete doesn't mark a border does it?

You don't need a wall or a fence to mark a border, a chalk line, a piece of string, a line of stones would be enough. Maybe even a change in colour of a concrete drive as long as as it is easy to discern.

go over with the plans and see your neighbour and show her why you think its like it is - let her try and explain it to you, which obviously she can't if the plans are in front of her

I too am thinking that concrete running 6'' too far over doesn't really constitute a 'border'. In so much as a marked contestable boundary. It's just a surface.

Say neighbor had a lawn and the had grass had encroached 6'' over the years across the edge of OPs drive, (grass does 'creep') then surely no one would be saying 'oh the grass has been there 13 years so therefore it's now her 6''. Would they??