My neighbour and his flying bins

[Philthedendron]

I just need a quick sense check that I’m not being unreasonable here, I’m off work sick at the moment and I’ve lost all sense of proportion. I’ve NC’d because I have an active thread running under my main user name on a health issue that’s identifiable but I’m a long term user.

So, I live at the end of a short track that branches into 2 drives: my neighbours drive and mine. We’ve had high winds for a couple of nights, so the last couple of mornings I’ve found next doors bins blocking the shared track. As you do, I’ve just moved them out of the way and popped them back on his drive on his hard standing area where he keeps his bins.

I got back from dropping the kids off this morning and noticed the bins were back on the track, blocking access to our house (I could have squeezed passed them but I’m in a big car and didn’t want to risk knocking them).

Well out marches Mr Nextdoor when he sees me getting out of the car and he shouts from his front door ‘I hope you’ve not got out to move my bin??’

I didn’t quite process what he said in time and I thought he was apologising that his bin was on the track, so I said ‘I need to get on our drive so I’ll just move it back don’t worry it’s no problem!’

I carried on and he ran over and said ‘no no leave the bin where it is this is our property!’

So I said ‘I need to put the car on the drive and don’t want to damage your bin so can you move it please if you don’t want me to?’

It went back and forth but basically, the upshot of the conversation is he thinks the shared track is owned by him, and he wants to start keeping his bins on the track so the bin men will collect them from there and he won’t have to move them.

I don’t believe the track is owned by them, I’m pretty confident it’s not owned by either of us. I didn’t want to argue on the street so I left the conversation by offering to take his bins down the track and back again to his bin store on bin day but he said they didn’t need that thank you. So I said well the bins can’t stay where they are and I’ll need to check the deeds.

I’m sympathetic to them getting older so don’t want to start a fight, but if they don’t own the track (which I’m confident they dont), are they allowed to leave their bin there under any circumstances? How do I challenge it?

Has he actually said he finds the weight of the bin a problem? He’s only in his 60s and still working, he isn’t a frail aged person! DH is mid 60s, working, and still immensely strong. You don’t need to give people our age a pass for being “old” when they’re not even retirement age and probably perfectly fit.

I agree with your DH to point, but it isn’t OK for this man to carry on believing that he owns the lane. Who knows what he might decide to do with “his property” in the future, or stop you doing.

Having seen your diagram he's being very silly.

If he leaves them out again I would leave your car in the lane as you "can't get past the bins".

lol you’re nicer then me. I would have put them in the road.

Well there is a bit of mystery on that point - his children are all grown up and the last one of 4 moved out around the time we moved in, so 10(ish) years ago.

Then about a year later, his wife mentioned over the gate that she was going to stay with her daughter for a while and she’d see us after Christmas/ in the new year and she wished us a merry Christmas etc etc. A couple of days later we got a Christmas card through the door addressed from all of them, but never saw the wife again. I assume she left him. I’ve also never seen any of the kids visit him but that doesn’t mean to say they haven’t or he hasn’t visited them, but I do find it odd that none of them have been back to the family home where they grew up, and he’s continued to live in a 6 bed farm house as a single man for the last 9 years.

He’s definitely struggling with his back, he’s mentioned a couple of times while he’s been gardening in the summer that he’s considering paving his lawn because he struggles with his back when pushing the lawnmower.

what a strange thing for him to get a bee in his bonnet over! Especially as you’ve said you’ve previously returned his bins for him!

Right, I’m going over now while DH sorts out dinner.

I plan to be matter of fact about everything, ‘you cannot store your bins in a way that obstructs access to our drive’ and see what he says.

I’ve printed both sets of title plans and I’ll keep them in my bag unless I think they’re going to help the conversation go smoothly.

I absolutely hate confrontation so I’m hoping he was just in a bad mood earlier..

No new patio in the last 9 years at his place?

Similar here. Our track was adopted by the council a few years after we moved in. Which means they'll have to mend it when it needs it.

We’ve also mowed his lawn(with his permission) when he was on holiday in the summer, taken in parcels for him and fed his pond fish on the odd occasion too. He usually drops a note through our door if he needs something and asks very politely if we wouldn’t mind lending a hand which we of course never do. We offered to maintain his garden for him while we was away for a month a couple of years ago and he was very pleased.

no but this is a running joke between DH and I, as dark as that is!

I’m pretty sure ours is owned by the council - there’s very little traffic up and down it, just us and the neighbour so in the 10 years we’ve been here I’ve never known it needing any work done. Someone did repoint the retaining walls though a few years ago, not sure who though.

The council offer bin collections for people with mobility and health issues

Your solicitor should have sorted this out when you purchased the property, either your neighbour owns it, you own it or there is shared access. I would check with them, might be able to clarify it for you. I can’t imagine it wasn’t clarified at the time as it’s such a crucial point.

I hope you casually bring this up when you’re over there, my neighbour occasionally brings my bins in when she can and I couldn’t be more grateful! I can’t imagine being arsey about it (I do return the favour but she’s too fast for me sometimes!)

The council will collect bins for elderly or disabled people from any reasonable place within their property boundary. I have this in place, and it is considered a reasonable adjustment. I would write a note to your neighbour stating that placing the bins where he wants imposes a risk of personal injury and/ or property damage to your car. Therefore, you are advising him not to do it as you would be forced to make a claim on his insurance if anything happened in the future, like his bin hit your wing mirror. For reference, I incurred life threatening injuries from a large wheelie bin during lockdown when it fell on me. This left me with nerve and vascular damage, and a paralysed arm, so strange things do happen! As for the bit of land. Assuming it is not registered and no one officially owns it, the neighbour could have his mind set on applying to the Land Registry to claim adverse possession and ownership of it. I know someone who successfully did this to an abandoned garage adjoining a freehold house they owned, where the owners of the garage freehold could not be traced. It is not easy but possible, especially with unregistered land with no apparent owner known to the Land Registry.

Rather than going straight in with telling he he can't do this or that, I'd just be saying you printed the deeds and the drive does not belong to either of you then hand them to him and let him join the dots.

Failing that I'm here for the fallout....😀

I’m back, we had a threshold conversation because he didn’t invite me in which was slightly awkward.

Anyway, he was initially very defiant and ‘I’ll put my bins anywhere on my own property thank you’ so I did end up producing the deeds. He was very upset I’d got the deeds and accused me of spying on his property and getting the title plans under false pretences from the land registry. I did explain you can just buy them online but he’s convinced I’ve called the council and bribed them because I’m ‘pally’ with the planning office . He said this in a half joking way but I’m not sure he was actually joking - I have no idea where that comment has come from, only thing I can think is that we know many of the local labour councillors through various bits of charity and community stuff and they’ve been round a few times, but they have nothing to do with planning and don’t even control the council!

He says the deeds aren’t real because his house was originally the only property that stood at the end of the lane and the lane was owned by the original farm. As his house is the original farm house, the lane therefore belongs to him.

Our house was built on the land in the late 1800’s when the original farm and land was sold off, so there is no way this is true. I explained that the title deeds are the title deeds and there’s no room for interpretation in them, and just repeated that he can’t block access to our house with his bin.

He then said he’s going to contact ‘the courts’ to see about it because he’s lived there 30 years and ‘knows his property’ and what he’s entitled to. I said he was welcome to, but that the title deeds are the reference point for where the boundaries are.

He said he will move his bins back into his drive ‘temporarily’ while the wind is bad, but doesn’t accept he was blocking access and thinks we should get a smaller car if we want to live here because ours is too big for the road . I’ve offered again to help him on bin days but he’s refused the help which is fine.

If the bins reappear in just going to keep moving them I think.

Gosh he's hard work. Well done OP.

I just think he’s very proud and didn’t want to be seen to be wrong. That’s fine by me, I don’t need to ‘win’ I just need his bin out of the way!

Im hoping he just doesn’t put it back again.

Do they show a right of way to your property?

How long have you lived there?

Asked and answered!

Are you worried about his mental capacity at all?

Why does it need a man to sort it out?

So they don’t need to - our boundary actually extends across the front of his gates and he has right of access over ‘our’ land. Reattached diagram for reference.

His house actually faces the other way, so the ‘front’ of his house is actually the other side of the building and he has a big garden to the side. There’s then a tarmaced area at the ‘back’ of his house and a gate like a rear yard (the bit on the diagram) on which he parks his car and stores his bins. So I think the reason the access is like it is is because it’s the front of our house but the back of his, so they’ve carved it up to give us access for a car to swing into our garage which was added in the 60’s.

No, no worries about his capacity. He’s very well spoken, able to form coherent (even if batshit) arguments and he’s still working from what I can tell. He travels alone all over the world, he’s still driving, he responded to my points articulately and coherently so although you can never be sure, I just think he’s a very proud man who’s lived alone a long time and perhaps is quite used to being right.

God you've more patience than me OP.

Thing is; DH has even less! So it would be me trying to sort it same as you are.