Neighbours made driveway over new home’s boundary.

[BraOffPjsOn]

So we’re buying a house and have received the boundary doc.
It shows very clearly where our land would be and we also brought the neighbouring plot’s boundary doc.
When we were there and from Google satellite view you can clearly see they’ve taken a chunk of ‘our’ land to make themselves a driveway (without it they only have a tiny path to their house and no space for a driveway). The solicitor is not giving much advice but I am pushing.

what would others do/suggest?

If you already own the house you can't back out.

If the neighbour's house is newer than ten years propably the new driveway boundary is recent enough for them to not be able to claim adverse posession yet.
Does them encroaching on your land affect you much at all?

If so, claim it back.

If not, offer to sell them the small piece of land or allow them to take control of it for nothing and claim adverse possession in ten years time.
You will need to explain. The arrangement to any future buyers.

If they have took some of your land by those plans, then their neighbours have also took some of theirs, as they should have the whole corner.

What are you wanting to achieve? A legal battle where your next door neighbour has to demolish their driveway and not be able to have 1 so you can have that extra tiny bit of space, just in case? They will then need to claim their bit back from their next door neighbour and it becomes a whole mess.

They likely would have had permission from the previous occupier. If they done this while you were living there then I would be thinking go legal, but as this has likely been there some time then I couldn't bring myself to put my new neighbour in a legal battle that will cost them £££ and leave them without a drive. Just pick another house

Land registry is not actually a list of your boundaries unless they have already been paid to have been determined or had past owners sign documents voluntarily determining them. They are a very general guide, and can be off - up to and in some cases well over a metre off from where it is shown on the plans.

You can't allow adverse possession. The "averse" bit is a requirement for the claim to be possible.

To me it looks like on the plans the neighbour’s driveway overlaps OP’s potential property a little bit but on the google earth photo the overlap looks like a massive overlap.

It looks like number 6 has started this by going in a straight line all the way up to the footpath. Number 7’s deeds clearly show their access straddles the corner, but the satellite image shows it sitting to your side. You can ask your solicitor to raise a question with their solicitor and get it in writing. On one of the TA forms there should be a question which asks whether there’s any right of way across your property, and overhang etc. what have they answered in that question?

I suspect it has always been this way as number 7 has an integral garage (as have the others). These don't normally get added afterwards so was presumably built like that. I guess from the look of the houses they were built 70s/80s? I doubt anyone built a house with a garage without driveway access in those days...

Plus if you go onto google earth and scroll back you can see it has been like this from at least 2004 (attached).

My suspicion is that it has always been this way and the plans are not especially accurate.

As I said before, you can still own the land but just have a note in your deeds and theirs that they have right of access in that strip only.
It’s more common than you think. And easily dealt with without boundary disputes.

Agreed!

Thanks everyone this is all such useful info and opinions.
I have scoured Google earth and looked through all the years of images of the area and it looks like it’s pretty much been there the whole time. Maybe they have added a little slither but it’s hard to work out.
I’m going to make sure the solicitor looks into properly - it feels like she doesn’t want to say much especially in writing so I’ve said we want advice on this.

Hoping there was an agreement or the boundary titles are a bit out and it’s not a massive issue but 🤷🏻‍♀️

You should never scale off these drawings
Land registry also state this
They are guidance only.

Perhaps there’s been a bit of a trade off at some point

Looking at this image it seems your rear garden to the right of your property is wider than the original plans. You can see the line if the fence doesnt line straight through with the line of the footpath straight up

So I wonder if the neighbours made a trade off agreement to allow vehicular access to your neighbours and in yours a wider garden.

Boundary drawings on land registry are indicative only

Its all about features on the ground.

Unless of course if there are dimensions on the LR drawings which tbh is very rare

The furthest I could get back on street view is 2009 and it is a different drive but looks the same size and has a blue car on it, so I think it's a case of what you see is what you buy as it's been there that long, possibly indefinitely.
I would say that the deeds just indicate the rough extent of what you buy and the situation on the ground is that you get.
It may even just be inaccurate drafting originally, as given the houses have original garages, the chance of them not including access to the garage is minimal and anyone arguing otherwise would have an uphill struggle!

I don’t think I’d worry too much. I’d still buy it if I wanted it and it was right house for us

Both of the deeds show a bit cut out from ‘your’ front garden to allow access - are you saying it is a lot more than what it should be?

it’s clearly designed to allow access to their front garden so should be big enough for it.

Previous house i bought was one property (farmhouse, cottage, barn conversion) split into 3, we bought the middle cottage, the boundaries on the land registry, didn't reflect the fence line. I told the solicitor she contacted sellers solicitor, land registry/ title deeds where changed to reflect the reality, sale went through fine. No massive drama.

Presumably you put the offer in based on what you saw thinking that that bit of land was the neighbours anyway and you felt you were offering the correct amount for the house. So this is largely just a paperwork issue for solicitors to fix.

Go on Google earth, click other dates at the bottom and see which dates show the drive. You might be able to work out if this has been done more than 10 years ago.

It depends on how bothered you are about potentially not ever getting that land back. And then it depends on whether you want the legal hassle. Are you prepared for both? If so, nothing stopping you from buying. Personally, I'd not want neighbours like that who are comfortable stealing land. That's a huge red flag. Though in fairness, you'd possibly have every legal right to build on your own land so you might not even need a solicitor. Have you spoken in person to the neighbour to let them know if you buy the house, you would redevelop your land? Could be worth seeing their reaction to gauge what kind of people they are.

Although there’s no proof any land has been taken

Why are you asking if it’s not bothering you that much?

Agree that no land has been taken here, it's clearly always been like that and if you go by the drawings you actually have more of their garden than you should.

Because I don’t know much about it and if it would cause us a huge headache if we tried to sell then I need to be aware.

That’s the main point of posting on mumsnet isn’t it? if it was urgent or I knew it be serious I’d be getting the land surveyed and other professionals involved. At the moment, over the bank hol weekend, when my solicitor isn’t around I’m grateful to the majority of responses for their advice and help.

Don’t buy it.

I once bought a new house where the developer messed up the parking spaces about a meter and a half on the whole row so everyone owned a parking space in front of their neighbours house. The issues it caused were massive and the developer ended up buying some of the houses back in order to fix it but it took years.

Avoid like the plague.. and definitely get another solicitor, one that will act for you in future , his attitude is ridiculous