Who owns the property next door to me?

[VWdieselnightmare]

For some context, my house and the house next door each occupy plots of around half an acre in a semi-rural setting.

For the 24 years I've lived here the house next door has been owned by Mr Jones. About 10 years ago Mr Jones went travelling and hasn't been seen in the UK since. I'm told he's now living in Kenya. While he was away his young adult son, Jones Jnr, moved into his dad's house. He also built a second, well-camouflaged property (a two-bedroom self-contained cabin) in the large garden. Jones Jnr lives in the house over the winter and lets the cabin out to long-stay tenants, then moves into the cabin after Easter and lets the house out on Air BnB.

I contacted Planning when this first happened. Jones Snr responded from abroad that he was a permanent resident in the house and that his dependent son, Jones Jnr, was a permanent resident in the cabin, and Planning told me that dependent children could be housed in the grounds.

Recently I noticed more construction activity next door and Jones Jnr has started building another cabin and seems to also have done the groundwork for a third. I phoned Planning who said they were having difficulty in discovering who owned the property. Apparently Jones Snr (still living abroad) was bankrupted in 2018 and has denied ownership. He says he transferred ownership via a bank to a third party whose name and details he's forgotten. The council haven't managed to get a response from Jones Jnr, who doesn't respond to letters. I've asked Jones Jnr who owns the property and been told to fuck off. The Land Registry has Jones Snr still listed as owner. I've been back to the Planning department with all this but they still say that Jones Snr is denying ownership and that there's nothing they can do if they don't who the owner is. Does the Land Registry have the final word on this?

Council Tax maybe the answer

If Mr Jones isn't paying council tax on the cabins, council tax will be very interested (no planning doesn't talk to council tax very often, so doubt they are aware)

Cabins in gardens with people living in them do attract council tax payments, get a drone and see if you can find the cabins - photograph them and send to council tax asking why when there are people living in them 12 months of the year - why aren't they paying tax

Oh and council tax can be backdated

so if you have the information form planning that both properties are being lived in and the date...do pass it on

Council tax won’t know owner, just who lives there.

the land registry is the correct route. Not sure why planning are listening to the owner saying he doesn’t own it. I suspect it’s as he isn’t resident here.

Thank you. I will take this up with the Land Registry. I wish I felt more confident in the powers of the Planning department. Everyone I've spoken to there about the issues arising from the development of the property has nervously said, 'Oh, Mr Jones and his son, they're tricky to deal with' and giggled nervously. Planning are so ferocious if you build a shed 1200mm too high, but don't want to step in and at least ascertain the facts with something like this.

Council tax won’t know owner, just who lives there.

No but when Mr Jones jar gets clobbered for council tax on each cabin in the garden, he is not going to be putting up more cabins and take down the cabin he already has there

Or he might just pay the council tax is he’s raking it in from airBnb.

I wonder if his business renting out the cabins is registered with HMRC

That’ll do it. HMRC will be more interested than planning I imagine, though it might take a while.

If you really want to know who owns the land (and let’s face it, it’s unlikely a new owner wouldn’t have updated land registry), you could always apply for planning permission on his land (you don’t have to own the land to apply for planning) It would cost you a bit for the application. You’d have to notify the ‘unknown’ owner in a local newspaper if they can’t be traced and you could send a copy to Jones Junior. I imagine the ‘owner’ would soon make themselves known to the planning dept. to let them know you don’t own the land (not that planning would care).
Bit of a nuclear option, and might not work, but depends how much you want to get it sorted out.

Land registry- make sure it is the .gov site and not a private company masquerading as the Land Registry.

It will cost you £3 to see who owns it and £3 to see the boundary map.

I agree with HMRC, they don’t let up.

If he’s letting the cabin to tenants then he needs planning permission which permits that - we have an annexe for my mum in the garden, but under its planning permission it cannot be let out to anyone and council tax will become due if someone who isn’t a dependent relative loves there.

If he has no planning permission for it at all then he shouldn’t have built it - even an annexe for a dependent relative needs planning.

The name on the deeds is the owner of the property.

Send it to Planning, involve your MP if necessary.

They like to pick on the little guys, maybe Mr Jones has been exceedingly nice to planning in the past?

It'll be business rates if they're holiday lets, not council tax.

Is the title to the property registered?

When bankrupted the trustee in bankruptcy could have taken over the property but you'll need to do some digging at the land registry.

Okay, I've paid my money to the Land Registry. It looks as if Mr Jones, probably fearing bankruptcy, split the property, leaving the house surrounded by a small garden area. Jones Jnr then developed the cabin on the other area of the land. It looks as if the original house was transferred to someone else, not a name I've ever heard of. The sectioned off bit, with the cabin, seems to not be registered.

I had a brief word with the woman in the local shop because she knows everything that's going on round here. She tells me that the house has been up for sale for years, although there are no signs and it doesn't appear on RightMove if you google. It's listed with an obscure estate agent company based in what appears to be someone's home and not an office, and it's hidden away on their site with a picture of its overgrown garden the first that comes up and five dreadful photos of the house and garden, designed to make the place look as unappealing as possible. It doesn't name the actual property, just the road. It's priced at about 50% more than anyone could reasonably expect it to sell for.

So this is some kind of scam, isn't it? As far as I can see (I've had a bit of a nosey) there's no fence or boundary visible between the house and the rest of the land and Jones Jnr is backwards and forwards between the two properties regularly.

I checked the London Gazette for a bankruptcy notice and but despite several attempts at a refined search I can't find him. If I google his name and London Gazette he does appear — but if I open up the link it's just to a historic page of the LG. I understand that the LG removes bankruptcy notices after 15 months. Is there anywhere else I can check?

So now things make a bit more sense. The house has been up for sale for years but advertised in such a way that no one would ever know or want to buy it. Meanwhile the son has been packing it full of Air BnB guests in the summer. Does Air BnB have any kind of automatic link to HMRC? If you go on Air BnB the name that people use when referring to the host is not the name Jones Jnr goes by, so I'm wondering whether that's all dodgy too. The people who rent the poorly insulated cabin in the winter have told me they have to pay cash. I've had them round at my house asking for help before now. No planning applications have been submitted for anything and I suspect that instead of having a septic tank installed, he's just created what used to be known as a soaraway: a cess pit with a hole in it so that the contents of the loo just soak away into the surrounding soil.

Thanks for the suggestion of HMRC. Would it be appropriate to contact the official receiver about this situation? There may be creditors desperately waiting to get some money back. I'm amazed that whoever has been put in charge of supervising this case hasn't checked the situation more thoroughly.

Do a bankruptcy search at the land charges registry. Fill in a form K16

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bankruptcy-official-search-application-k16

If it turns out that he was made bankrupt but failed to declare his interest in the properties (that he had just given away) then that is potentially a fraud against his creditors. You would need to notify the Insolvency Service about any concerns that you may have.

Thank you, I'll follow that up. It never fails to astonish me how apparently easy it is to dodge the consequences of bankruptcy. No one really seems to take the creditors seriously.

It might not be strictly legal, but does it impinge on your life in any meaningful way?

Certainly the influx of Air BnB visitors affect us. The house has 2 bedrooms, a mezzanine area and a sofa bed and he advertises it as a rural party house for groups of up to ten. The cars in the lane and the late night music, shouting and bonfires affect everyone in the area. Air BnB are aware of the problem but have done nothing. There's also the septic tank issue. I'm not the only person to have noticed that the Jones house never has the poo tanker come to call. The rest of us have septic tanks and one knows from the noise and the smell whenever one of the neighbours is being emptied out. I've never, in all the years I've lived here, known the poo tanker call next door. Which means that he's almost certainly using an illegal soakaway system: a cesspit with a hole in the bottom, meaning that unfiltered sewage is draining into the soil and the surrounding area. That was bad enough when it was just Mr Jones there. Now he has groups of 10 there most weekends from Easter to September the pollution is a more worrying issue. Neighbours have raised this with Planning in the past but because they can't contact Mr Jones and can't say for certain who the house belongs to, they don't pursue the issue.

Might Environmental health be interested in the sewage? I'm not sure?🤔

Ok I get it now. How annoying!

Environmental Health for the illegal sewage? Plus your local water board?

Blimey Miss Marple. This just shows what an ass the law is. I'd be like a dog with a bone. Complain to environmental and every single department about every issue you can think of that affects your or family's life. Access risk for emergency services? The roads part of your local council for example. Something's got to give!
Good luck

Don’t be daft. He will just pay council tax out of the rate, the profit, for the air bnb. He’s never going to charge less than council tax. Be sensible.

What about insurance? Public liability or whatever if renting out property.