Hi - I'm hoping there may be some property lawyers lurking on here, or someone who has come through a similar issue and out of the other side. I will try to keep it brief and on the advice of another mumsnetter over on the Property channel I am posting the relevant pages of our Land Registry 'Charge Certificate' and some photos.
We share a driveway with our neighbours who carved up their garden and sold the plot to build our house in 1997. There were one lot of owners who bought the new build before us and we are the second owners, moving in four years ago.
For context the neighbour (landowner) is 80 and seems to have some kind of OCD. He has an extreme need for control and literally cuts blades of grass to tidy them. I can give more detail but essentially it is very odd and highly unlikely that somebody of his character would sell land and agree to share a drive. I think he finds it highly stressful in theory (in practice we do nothing out of the ordinary and are very quiet and considerate neighbours). He does a lot of territory marking of the area in front of his house, where the driveway sits and has made us feel that we are driving across his front garden each day. It used to be his front garden before it was concreted over to form an extension of the driveway to our house and we really feel he hasn't moved on from this since 1997. We would have sympathy if this had been done to him, as he is an old man, but he was in his 50s when he sold the land and made a lot of money from it. Plus there is actually no compromise he has to make in reality as you will see from the plans (I think, but I am clearly biased!).
His latest 'antic', which has been a work in progress since we moved in 4 years ago, has been to grow his leylandii hedge over our stretch of the driveway, as shown in the pictures. He obviously kept it back when the previous owners were here but has let it grow over since we arrived. He doesn't like vans coming down the driveway and he has told us that he thinks this deters them and 'slows traffic' (there is no traffic issue and his house is set back as any house would be from a lane or road running past). Anyway, he has told us he has done this deliberately and continues to do it. He still pays the local tree company to cut it each year, they were here 3 weeks ago, but has briefed them (he tells me) to not cut it back hard, even though we asked him explicitly to do this and he agreed. He has told me he then went back on his word and asked them not to do this after all and to leave the height of it uncut this time round. He tells me these things to wind me up as well as saying things like 'don't lose any sleep over it' as a parting shot. He is a nasty character unfortunately.
Our concern is that we won't now be able to get high sided vehicles down the lane and especially fire engines, ambulances and lorries to do our extension next year. (This will be his intention). I believe from reading on the subject that we are the dominant owners of an easement and he is the servient owner. His role is to do nothing to interfere with the easement but he has not responsibility to cut back from the easement either. We have asked to cut the hedge back and he refuses 'do not touch my hedge, do not damage it with lorries coming down' etc. So we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Could somebody advise on how on earth we get this hedge cut back so we can regain the full width of the easement granted to us?
A cup of tea won't do it, we are on the tenth cup of tea and he smiles and says it doesn't worry him (which clearly makes me want to throw the tea in his face!).
I will post the legal docs separate post but attached to this are 1) a view from the road down the driveway - neighbour's house is on the left and ours is straight on where you see the timber garage and 2 and 3 are taken from our driveway to show the extent of the overhang (after his cut so this is as good as it now gets without cutting in to brown).
Thanks in advance!