Who is responsible for leaf clearance on a shared driveway?

[leafy123]

We have a driveway which is partly shared with one set of neighbours. Both houses are detached and on a hill so the shared bit of driveway is at the bottom and then as you go further up it there is a turn off leading to our house and the main driveway then carries on up the hill to the neighbours house. There is a tree on our land which sheds a lot of leaves onto the bottom (shared) bit of driveway. The leaves must be cleared when they build up as the driveway, which is steep, gets very slippery otherwise, even a 4x4 with winter tyres on can slip around a bit when it is wet and it's also pretty dangerous to try and walk down it to the road.

My partner thinks it's solely our responsibility to clear the leaves as the tree is on our property but I'm not sure he's right, hence the question. We are in England.

You DH sounds like a considerate Neighbour.
If you didn’t have the tree there wouldn’t be leaves on the shared drive.
I’d be pissed off if my neighbour expected me to clear up their leaves.

As above.

I'm with your husband.

Your tree, your leaves.

I think that you should clear the leaves from your tree.

I agree with your husband. Although it is probably legally a shared responsibility, I think out of consideration you should do it.

I would expect to do this. Invest in a leafblower type thing?

I'm with your DH on this one. It is your tree, after all. Anyway, if you gather up fallen leaves and keep them in black bin bags in a corner of the garden for a couple of years, by the power of magic they turn into lovely leafmould compost. Brilliant stuff.

Im also with your husband. Sounds to me like you just don't want to be bothered with cleaning up the leaves, in which case get rid of the tree.

It's your tree, so your responsibility.

I already am doing it. Neighbours used to get their gardener to do about a quarter of it but then stopped.

Leaf blowers/suckers aren't very good I'm afraid.

Your husband is correct. Surprised you need to ask.

It has a TPO on it so no cutting it down. Also not really the right thing to do.

I'm out now, this is legal not AIBU. I merely asked a question.

They make good compost. If you get them scooped up maybe post on a local giveaway site to see if any gardeners / allotment holders would like them.

Your tree your leaves.

I don't know about legal responsibilities but I think it would be courteous for whoever's tree it is to clear up the leaves. So you, in this case.

If you are in the UK, legally the leaves aren't yours once they fall

www.rhs.org.uk/plants/types/trees/the-law

But the decent thing to do is to clean them up, and you benefit from it too so why not?

We have a shared driveway, but the leaves come from a neighbour who doesn't share it. It is a huge job all year round.
On our deeds we each all have a responsibility for a proportion of the drive, although we own the land itself in entirety. In practice, we generally all clear the bits nearest our own houses. If we have more leaves than we can fit in the green bin (which is often), the tree owner has a huge compost heap we stick them on.
Luckily we all have a similar approach and get on well enough.
I definitely wouldn't buy a house under such massive trees again though. Beautiful they may be, but wow what a lot of work they create