Restrictive covenant question

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I think we may have inadvertently breached a restrictive covenant. We live in a detached house and have land that goes from the back garden round the side, like an L around the house. The land stops parallel to the end of our drive. We have had a fence erected to take in the full amount of the L wrapped around the house, extending our garden from back and half the side to the full L.

Retrospectively (I know!) I've read our restrictive covenants and it says ' not to erect or plant any building boundary wall division fence or hedges in front of the building line of any dwelling house' . Punctuation there is as per the deeds.

Does this mean only if it was between properties, such as between front gardens (creating a division) or have we breached? TIA

How old is the property? It is fairly standard on new builds.

Does this affect anyone else ie because you came all the way down the drive? You have the same layout as me but my side garden is not next to anyone, it is next to the pavement.

Thanks for reply. The property was built in 1989. There are no houses to our left (where the L is) it all backs into woodland. In front of the fence is a path and a two car lay by. Which often has a big white van parked in ! There are houses on opposite side of road.

We did knock on the house opposite ahead of the work being carried out, however the curtains seem to be twitching a bit now ( I might be being paranoid!).

Looking along the street there are houses with ten foot conifers beyond the building boundary separating front gardens.

I would wait and see if the neighbours say anything but this is 30 years after the estate was built, I am not surprised lots of people have planted up their gardens.

If the neighbours do complain I would point out the other breaches and tell them why you enclosed it (van, privacy) and if they are unhappy let them take it all the way through the courts. It is very costly and hopefully will put them off doing it. The convenants are there to stop people building up what it termed an open plan aspect and to maintain the viewline when driving off a drive.

If your houses were in a row and you put a 6ft fence to divide your land from the neighbour you can see why this would be an issue. But your house is like mine, I have a side garden which faces a row of houses. So they can just see the 6ft wall that the builders built when enclosing my back and side garden. My drive is not parallel to the side garden but at a 90 degree angle.

If you want to read up more on this sort of stuff then the Garden Law forums is a way to lose several hours of your life, with trees, fences, boundaries, rights of way etc and what neighbours do.

Thank you for taking the time to reply. All very useful to know.

I'm not suppose to have fences above 5ft but as my house was built in 1953 I'm not entirely sure who would pull me about it?

@ArnoldBee I know I was wondering who enforced them? Our house was built 1989 but the builder no longer exists (Leech homes) .

Covenants can only usually be enforced by the people that made them. If your house is that old nobody will come and ‘make’ you comply. The council won’t be interested.

If the nature of the road has been changed by others putting up fences and hedges it will be very difficult for someone to enforce the covenant.

Probably the only time this would be an issue is if you sold (and the only with an eagle eyed sol).

Even then you could buy an indemnity for minimal £. Do not alert the free holder to your 'transgression"

Our next door neighbours did this about three years ago. They're the end house and they've fenced in their front garden to make it safe and usable for their young children.
Other covenants that have been completely ignored locally are no commercial vehicles and no boats/ caravans/ horse-boxes.

If you don't have a residents association you are probably fine. We lived in houses on a large estate for years and you became a co owner of the residents company when you bought the house. They vigorously enforced the covenants.