To think a Solicitor might be able to help with this or am I wasting my time?

[girlfriend44]

I have been housing a BT openreach signal box on my house wall for many years. (wayleave agreements for anyone who dosent know)
BT are supposed to have an agreement with you if you have their property on your land as our people who supply electricity pylons etc.

It turns out through investigation that there was never an agreement in place for a box to be on my property all these years.

Openreach have offered me about £200 for all those years ive had the box plus agreeing to keep it on the house going forward?

You are not allowed to remove the box yourself otherwise you can be charged with malicious damage in order to get the £200 you have to agree to keep the box up there forever.
Everything is on their side and the payment is crazy, not to mention if i hadnt investigated it would never have come to light.

They agree the payments are low but say thats the most they will offer. I can fill in a form and get the payment and be done with ti.
OR
Would it be worth me contacting a solicitor to see if they can negotiate a higher payment or am I wasting my time.

Anyone had similar or know?

I'd tell them to find someone else, then. It wouldn't be worth it to me personally, I'd be concerned about damage & who'd be responsible, etc..

These things have a pepper grain payment. You'll get bugger all even if a solicitor took it up.

In answer to your questions. No you can't negotiate a higher fee so If you'd rather they remove the box and not get the £200, get them to take it away.

Any solicitors fees will far outweigh the £200.

“There was no agreement ever in place.

Its only come to light because i chased it up?”

What, you woke up one day and thought - oooooh, wonder if you get rent for these things?

So when you bought the house, it was there and you didn’t question it?

Fair enough you’ve found a way to grab some cash for nothing - but you need to accept that it’s £200 for nothing, and not more.

It’s not in their interests to make it a negotiated amount. Better to pay £1000 to install it elsewhere, than pay 100,000 people more in future. So it doesn’t make sense to negotiate with you.

@HotWashCycle those chancers write to me periodically too because 2 11,000 volt lines run over around 1 metre of my property, right at the top of the garden. The wires cause us zero issues as most of that part is hedge. Even better, the local electricity supplier comes every 5 years to trim all our trees around the wires for free. If I make them a brew, they even chop the wood into fireplace-sized logs. I don't want any money for it and don't want to rock the boat and jeopardise my free tree surgery as that is worth a whole lot more than what the chancers could get me.

OP, take the money if you want to.

No it came to light as they tried to access the box on our property without permission. It got the ball rolling for me to look into whether there was an agreement ever.

Depends. No win no fee.

I would just tell them Nom and move it, because when you come to sell the property it may devalue the property by a grand...

There is zero chance a nwnf solicitor will take this on.

You don't want the box, just ask them to remove it.

We used to get £5 per year back around 2000 in our old house for having a telegraph pole at the end of our garden. I think that was BT.
We didn't mind the pole. It was a
Long garden and it was tucked away in a corner, but £5? What's the point of that?

Any chance of a photo?
Can't visualise what it looks like.

I’m not sure if you’re being deliberately obtuse but pp are asking whether the box was already there when you bought the property? If so how come it didn’t come up in the survey?

Or are you suggesting you’ve lived in the property for decades and at some point someone snuck in during the night and affixed the box to your wall without telling uou?

Presumably they find someone else who will accept it without demanding whatever you fancy demanding.

Would it be worth me contacting a solicitor to see if they can negotiate a higher payment or am I wasting my time

You would be wasting your time (and money) take the £200.

Remember that the money for the wayleave payments come from our utility bills!

Solicitors will only take cases on on a no win no fee basis if they stand a decent chance of getting a reasonable amount of costs back from the other side. This is a claim which, if it ever got to court, would be in the Small Claims court for which you can't claim costs. So I wouldn't rely on this if I were you.

If you get a no win no fee solicitor to take on this case I will personally send you a fiver.

No win no fee is for when you’re bringing a specific action against someone, an action allowed to you by law.

You haven’t got an action against BT. If you think your action is that they failed to pay previously, they’ve already remedied that by offering the £200.

Even if you had a case to bring, and they would “owe” you say £2000 - what solicitor is going to take that on for, say, a 20% cut of it?

You’re just being silly now.

But then, you’re the poster who grumbled that Meet Up organised meets you didn’t want, but wouldn’t organise your own - so you generally do want something for nothing I think.

Say, for argument's sake and being generous, that you should get five quid for every year its been there. I think that sounds very generous given this is a box you didn't even notice and you get £10 annually for a pole. There's no way you've lived in your house for 40 years with an openreach box.

Clearly the box was there when you bought the house and your solicitor failed to notice it.

Take them to court. Or alternatively take £200 out of the cash point and tear it into pieces. The end result will be the same.

I would take the £200.

No win no fee is not applicable here. It's a no win case for starters. On what legal basis do you think there is a case?

A solicitor will charge you more than £200 to act.

If you really are not happy you'd be better going to the small claims court.

You're being greedy and no solicitor will take this on a "no win no fee" basis.

I got £2500 from western power for a pylon with a transformer box on it with a 14 year agreement. Pretty impressed with that!

On what legal basis? BT did not sign an agreement with the OP? That's not down to them it's down the the solicitor dealing with the sale. BT must have signed an agreement with the homeowner at some point so that have done nothing wrong. Would not putting this in the selling pack be reason to sue? Again on what basis. The solicitor should have alerted the new home owner, but the home owner hasn't lost out financially, so what are they suing for? They've been offered the standard fee, they've suffered no loss.

There isn’t a claim here so references to a small claims court are erroneous.

An initial chat with a solicitor may be helpful to think about what impact a wayleave would have on the property. Can they dig up the property to lay or maintain any cables, if they do do they have to make good to your satisfaction, do they have to give you notice of any works or entry on the property, etc etc. These are all important points to consider when you come to sell the property. I personally would approach the company and ask them to foot the bill for my solicitor to review and complete the wayleave (provided it’s on acceptable terms), or have the box removed for the sake of the property’s sale-ability in due course.