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?

All the details aside, it's very strange that he has gone from being amicable and reasonable to obsessive and unreasonable. I wonder if there is something else going on and the bins/lane are just something he has fixated on? I don't necessarily mean early-onset dementia, but some sort of mental breakdown. If he had always been grumpy and pedantic, you'd know where this was coming from and that's what I thought until he started saying the 'deeds are not real' and suggesting he has been talking to someone in the council secretly.

I know you've said the family have disappeared but is there anyone else you can talk to about him?

Practically speaking, call the council in the new year. Establish that the deeds are real (which of course they are) and ask for this in writing. Take it from there.

I'd be wanting to find out for sure who owns the road before going any further. Though clearly he shouldn't be blocking a shared access. The telephone/telegraph pole wouldn't be a definitive indicator of it having been adopted. You need to find out if it's registered and get the register for that. A search of the index map is the first step:

www.gov.uk/government/publications/official-searches-of-the-index-map/practice-guide-10-official-search-of-the-index-map

If you are planning on an extension I would walk on eggshells. Having neighbours unhappy is so much hassle. That's all I'd say

you need to find out who the lane actually belongs to and what rights you actually have. I expect the trigger was your extension plans as it’s potentially going to cause a lot of disruption, including an increase in traffic and noise. If his back is a problem I think the council are required to help people with health conditions and disabilities to sort their bins out so you could suggest he requests the bin collection people collect the bin from his property. If a bin lorry can fit down the lane isn’t there enough room for your car and a bin? How difficult is it making your access?

I think others are right: he can't be wrong, which probably explains why his wife left him and his grown up children don't visit. And those likely truths haven't changed him: he's doubled down and lied to boot.

So you'll probably need legal advice and a cease and desist letter.

If a bin lorry can fit down the lane isn’t there enough room for your car and a bin?

I may have misunderstood but I took OP to mean that the bins are kept in the bin store by the house but unreasonable neighbour normally (until this recent weirdness) takes them down the (short) track to be collected on bin day. From her post:

I left the conversation by offering to take his bins down the track and back again to his bin store on bin day

So I was assuming the bin lorry itself doesn’t go up the track, the bins are collected from the street end of the track.

Your solicitor would have done searches during your purchase of the property so you could check those before you go to the expense of buying his deeds.

OP has said she has already got both sets of deeds & shown them to him.

There will be a Covenant of some kind saying that it’s shared and neither of you own it. He can’t block access to your house and nor can either of you claim it. We’ve got the same set up between us and next door, our road is private and ends in a cul de sac, our house is the middle house of three and with ours it is within our boundary line but our solicitor made it clear it was shared. It’s to allow us both to use as a space to reverse into to exit the road. Don’t back down OP.
The refuse wagon doesn’t come down our road, the bins are pulled out onto the pavement on the main road road at the end of our road. It sounds like op does the same.,

Have you not got the searches in your legal documents from when you bought the property? Unless your solicitor didn't do their job all this information about who owns the track should be in there.
My parents bought a bungalow at the end of a shared track and everything had to be documented and checked. All the original conveyancing paperwork was needed when the property was sold and the buyers insisted we took out an insurance policy in case they had any problems after they bought it.

I saw that when I refreshed the page. Should have checked before posting.

When you go on the land registry you can ‘drop a pin’ over the drive where his bins are and it will tell you who owns it. It will no doubt be an old landowning family. If your services pipes run underneath, their permission will be needed to access them.

Grin and bear it till extension has been built...

The man is clearly very unhinged seeing as his entire family have walked away from him. I’d stop engaging with him but also try to to antagonise. Just move the bins off of the lane to the most convenient place for him to access them every time.

That is indeed strange, especially considering he seems like such a delightful person to be around.

You're more generous than I am, so he's lucky he's not my neighbour.

He sounds frankly batshit.

Ooh, I can't stand neighbourhood busy-bodies and trouble-makers - people who have such shallow little lives that they can only look to cause silly issues for everybody else in order to create a little drama, feel important and make themselves look like Charlie Big Potatoes.

People like this 'know' they are right, just because they want that to be the case; it has no basis at all in reality. When it suits them, they will refer to the law, but when that goes against them and doesn't back up their little fantasies, they always have some esoteric 'knowledge' or 'know somebody at the council who told them...'.

Incidentally, when he accuses you of 'stealing his bins', you may want to tell him that they are not his bins; they belong to the council, who have supplied them for the ongoing use of the property, primarily with their own collection systems in mind - if he's so keen on asserting legal property ownership rights.

Then again, maybe his imaginary friend at the council will be able to tell him 'in confidence' that, whilst the council owns everybody else's wheelie bins in the county, his are the original wheelie bins from 1800, so he owns them personally, as he has done for the last 224 years!

When is the next bin day? 🍿

@Vinculum

she said “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 presumed this meant they’d drive the bin lorry down and collect them but could be that’s he expecting the bin collectors to drag them to the main road. I interpreted as the first as they wouldn’t drag them down here. So actually OP that could be a solution. Have you had a collection and have they collected the bins from halfway down the lane? They might not be willing to do that. Does the council have a designated collection point? Is it at the main road? Or is it at the edge of your property which is often the case so your neighbour could leave his bins on the edge of his drive and the council would need to sort out the collection.

He can’t put his bins where it causes an obstruction.
Our neighbour is as arrogant and we live in the countryside in detached houses.
In our neighbour’s case he doesn’t want anything to touch his precious garden. He trims our hedge ( divides the properties) on his side then does it from our side without our permission. We have a thick hedge for a reason.
He cleans his lane and dumps the waste at the foot of our garden behind a wall.

Having read parking threads on here . I would get solicitors to find out who owns the road and if you can buy it . Otherwise thus going to go and on

I would sit tight until bin day - I would be extremely surprised if the bin men will back down or even walk down the track to empty his bins. The problem may resolve its self (especially as you've applied for planning permission- he could make you life much more difficult than you can his!!)

As a man living alone how on earth does he generate enough rubbish in 2 weeks to make his bins very heavy?! <Misses point of thread>

@JoyeuxNarwhal Body parts. Body parts.
[a Joke to be clear].

@Philthedendron sorry if you've said and I missed it but roughly how old is he? I saw he has adult children and has back trouble so guessing not a youngster...
Was wondering what is age was to see how likely the dementia theory is. I know it can strike at any age but realistically the older, the more likely it could be this.

It sounds to me like maybe the planning application has set this off? Maybe it's some misguided thing that he wants to make it hellish for you to get deliveries, contractor vans etc down the lane?

No idea how to resolve it, it sounds like you've done just the right thing and he's just utterly batshit. I'd be tempted to dump my car in the lane and just say "that's as far as I could get it without touching the bin" but not sure I'd follow through...

Does he maybe think that if he tells you enough that he 'owns' the access that you'll need to pay him a fee when you start the building work?