Neighbour’s side gate

[Joshski28]

Hoping for some clarification please.
Our next door neighbour has installed a tall wrought iron gate to close off the side access to their house. Our house wall runs alongside their side return and they have no fence or their own wall. The frame of the gate is drilled into their house wall on one side and flush against our wall. It hasn’t been drilled in but they have used the wall of our house to essentially ‘wedge’ the other side of the frame. Doesn’t look like there is any damage to our house.
Should they have asked for permission from us as they are using our property to enable the gate installation. I’m not sure we would have refused but I would have liked to understand what was being done first.

Yes they should’ve.

I can’t quite understand the set up but is the frame touching your house or encroaching on your boundary?

The wall of our house is the boundary. It is an extension to the original house which was completed years before we bought the house. So the gate frame is physically touching the external wall of our house to fill the width of their side return, their house being the support on the other side of the gate frame.

It would depend where it was. I personally would ask them to use a post concreted into the ground. Having lived somewhere where the gate slammed and reverberated through my whole house I wouldn’t allow it.

Is it something worth getting annoyed about?

Does it damage your house, look bad or inconvenience you in any way?

I agree. I think what they’ve done is eminently sensible but it is more the fact they should have asked us first. I want to stay on good terms but that goes both ways.

I think I’ll have a word to say that they need to ask permission if they are encroaching on our boundary and if the gate causes too much noise then they’ll have to remove it and install a post to fix the gate to. Thanks

Tbh, if they drilled into your house or fixed the gate onto your house, then yes.

But in this case, they havent, so probably no.

But really, it sounds like a half assed job, using friction to keep a gate shut..

Your wall is right on the boundary- if you didn’t want things from their side going right up to your wall you should’ve left a gap. If what they’ve constructed is on their property and not attached to your wall it’s none of your business, surely.

Well, it would've been polite to mention it.

My only concern would be if they use it a lot for access. Is it going to keep banging against your house?

@superram

It would depend where it was. I personally would ask them to use a post concreted into the ground. Having lived somewhere where the gate slammed and reverberated through my whole house I wouldn’t allow it.

I had this with a neighbour's gate. The exact line of the boundary isn't particularly clear (except to about the nearest 12"), and they'd mounted their gate about a foot or so over where I think the boundary is. So it was bolted to the wall of my house one side, and another wall of mine on the other side (the aperture where the pathway/gates is are both my walls, on my side of the boundary). It's a wrought iron gate, and when it clangs I can hear it reverberating in every room in my house - even 2 floors up!

I argued the position of the gate with neighbour (without wishing to start a boundary dispute), and they begrudgingly moved it 6 inches their way - far enough that it's now a grey area as to it's position relative to the boundary. It still reverberates through my house though, which they don't seem to get at all. I'm amazed if it doesn't make similar noise in their own house too.

In your circumstances I'd ask them to put their own post in for the gate to latch on, and make it clear that you don't want it to be fixed in any way to your wall.