To extend my garden onto public land?

[FlutterShite]

My neighbour a few doors down has done this.

Our gardens back onto a public footpath bordered by wide grass verges. My neighbour's garden extends on to part of the verge, with a fence around it to make it part of her garden.

She says it was like that when she bought the house, but reckons it's as simple as building the fence and waiting a few years, after which time the land becomes mine. Is that true or absolute nonsense? I've emailed the council planning department to ask, but haven't yet had a reply.

Some absolute wanker tried to enclose a massive piece of woodland on our estate recently. He was extending the house, so thought he'd extend the garden too.

Fortunately, pretty much everyone who saw his "enclosing fence" with private signs on it complained and he was swiftly the centre of a lot of attention.

Some twat tried this on with our shared drying green up in Scotland too. CFs are at it all the time.

@FlutterShite did you use a VPN when emailing them?

Your neighbour would have to prove that she had made efforts to contact the owner of the land otherwise she would not be able to claim the land as her own even after 12 years.

Buy some of the land behind it. Coincidentally, similar to what BobnLen describes.

OP you’re hilarious and naive

If it's public highway or registered to anyone else,you can't claim the adverse possession/ 12 year thing either.

@MissersMercer There you go, but it doesn't really add anything!

She will now!

It doesn’t.

I used to work for a public transport authority and when we built a tram line along the backs of some properties, we found that quite a lot of people had ‘extended their gardens onto public land’ many years previously. They didn’t get to keep the land they’d nicked.

We couldn't buy ours, I guess that is because the council might want it in the future, I don't know what happened to ours after we moved because a large road was built at the back of the houses so the council may have taken it back for screening but because it was rented we knew it was never actually ours so you couldn't put anything permanent on it but we used it as a vegetable patch or you could put grass on it and put a fence at the end because they can all be moved

Your neighbour might not be as friendly to you as you might like in future 🙄

We’re flanked by a stretch of woodland between our boundary and the highway (tiny lane). We applied to buy the woodland and the council dithered and kept coming up with insane, random and vastly differing values, basing it on the high value of our property. People kept getting muddled. We had random contact from them. It was chaos. We wanted to buy it, but their total lack of cohesion meant we couldn’t. So we used it. Then we fenced it. Now it’s ours.

Someone down the road has done this (only a strip about 3 feet wide, along the side of their garden next to a path). It’s the house where the Parish council planning officer lives!!

But it’s public land (council owned)…
You really thought it was just there for the taking and the council would give you their blessing?
Mind blowing. Wow.

No it's not.

Absolutely not. Not your land. Your neighbour is in the wrong too.

Of course it isn’t yours 😆

As in, it's actually yours and you've got paperwork to prove it?

Or as in, you've put fences around it and nobody has challenged you yet?

There's a vast difference.

Someone near to where I live has done this. A neighbour informed the council and it's been taken off them.

Imagine if we all did this

I wouldn't. It's not your land, and you will have to take down the new fence at your own cost if found out.

We have a lane allowance behind us, not used by vehicles. My DH has planted a small garden back there, but we would never think about fencing it.

At least 6 new build houses extended their gardens into our local woods to claim extra land .Yep they were reported and all had to take down the new fencing and get within own boundaries. They also had to restore the wood
A couple of them were foolish enough to post on the local Facebook to moan as it had cost them and no one was using the land!! .
They did not come out of this well
Don't steal land buy it

So by your reckoning, everyone that lives in the countryside can just start building fences in next door’s fields..?

My grandad did this with a small piece of land next to his back garden (his house was at a slight angle to a terrace and it had created a triangular shaped bit that when he moved in wasn’t claimed by the previous owner of his house or the one next door)

He put his fence round it and took care of it, next door weren’t bothered (I dont know if they would have had grounds to be bothered), and many years later he registered it with the land registry as his.

But this was many years ago, and didn’t involve any public paths or land that was being maintained by the council.

Well, to be fair, there are situations where people buy land that adjoins theirs, from the owners of the land. So buying from the council (or the housing developer if it's in fact theirs) is not that far beyond the realms of possibility.

I didn't know initially that the previous neighbours had nicked the land. That's why I was intrigued by my neighbour's "advice" and compelled to ask for the wisdom of Mumsnet, which has been really interesting and helpful - thanks, all.