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?

I'd also be looking back at when it has been like this, in line with when the current neighbours bought their house. They might not be nightmare cheeky neighbours if the the situation was like that when they bought their house.

Yes I have friends who bought a piece of land to build a bigger drive on from NDneighbour. All fine. That neighbour sold however and new buyers were horrified to see they'd lost some land. They wanted it back but had no legal legs to stand on 🤷‍♀️

Get a better solicitor.

Are you taking out a mortgage? In which case if your solicitor works for your mortgage company (which they normally do) then your mortgage company won't want to buy property where they don't have access to the full plot. We had to sign a disclaimer in a similar circumstance when the lines didn't line up....

@BraOffPjsOn Just to add to my earlier comments, I would also mention this discrepancy to the Estate Agents so they understand the issue and no-one else falls for it.

If you go ahead with this without addressing it, this could be a very costly and time consuming mistake. If you have time and patience, it can be resolved, but if you are not getting the plot as per the land registry, then it may well affect the value of the property which will be of great concern to your mortgage company should they become aware and if you ignore it now, if you want to sell in the future, your buyers could have the self same problem.

The difference being, the current vendors can plead ignorance about the boundaries as they have inherited the house, you on the other hand know about it prior to purchasing and if you try to sell, you will be legally bound to declare the dispute over the property boundary.

We had to deal with the probate sale of a late relative's house a couple of years ago and both ours and the purchaser's solicitors went into what I can only describe as an Olympic level of nit-picking pedantry. They would have been all over this like a rash. So I'm struggling to understand why your solicitor is showing such little interest.

Back out……seemingly the solicitor can’t be arsed to step up and do their job!

Ask the current owners to get a boundary survey done by a land surveyor

Boundaries move over time. They are what is on the ground, not plans. If this has been placed and accepted, that’s it, you’re better off adjusting to the new norm.

Im sure people will get all excited about what I’m saying but having been in a boundary dispute, take my word for it.

Well the previous owners could have given permission, might have sold it to next door. I've known this happen. So I wouldn't jump to theft @BraOffPjsOn

This is why if you don't have a mortgage do not use a solicitor that does mortgage work. Get an independent: normally not part of a large group.

solicitor should be looking at records to see if there is a permissive path or route of any sort or if there was any transaction that allowed this to happen.

We have a weird array of right of access and egress, right of way to no where (as land at bottom of garden was built over so it was no longer an access/egress and ownership of a strip of land at the start of a driveway to 7 houses supposedly so any repairs etc are shared - but no one ever agrees anything

Well that’s some made up rules lol

"Only buy it if you are happy accepting that you will likely no longer own that bit of land. If you are happy with that situation, then by all means buy the property"

And to add to that: only buy if you're comfortable with it likely being an issue if/when you sell the property

Get a real solicitor they sound like one of those cheap ass conveyancing farms who don’t deal well with anything beyond the most basic sales

Change your solicitor. Do not go ahead without further proper solution driven advice. Neighbours may claim possession after fencing it in for x number of years.

Run.
It will never be problem free.

Pull out if purchase, you are walking into a nightmare.

Sorry? I'm not too sure what you mean.

Either do not buy it or ask the current owners for a reduction on price because of it. Simple. Or have the solicitor (a better one) send a notice of possession to the neighbours making it clear you are purchasing the land and that they will no longer have use after you move in

Best diagram use ever. Now I get it! Thanks

They don’t have claim to the land, there are a whole set of rules to claiming land that isn’t yours, and one of which includes putting a sign up etc. its not as simple as saying the land is yours because you've had it for a prolonged period 🫣

oh really?
I thought if they’d been using it for 12+ years they claimed squatters rights on it basically.

Waiting for the solicitor to contact me back after my Friday afternoon emails!

We are with a solcitor’s company but have been put with a ‘conveyancing executive’. So I’m going to push for her to speak to someone senior. I assume as it should be a simple process (first time buyers > us > empty house) that it’s been given to her and she doesn’t know much.

No the rules are very strict and require evidence of usage of the land plus notification to people.

I'm afraid that you are mistaken. This is England and you are not required to put up sign or anything at all like that.

There are two different processes depending on if the land is registered or not (almost all houses in England & Wales are registered).

Presuming that the land is registered then the squatter must occupy the land for ten years. They can then make an application to the Land Registry to claim the land.

Land Registry send a notice to the registered owner. This notice then gives the owner 13 weeks in which to reply. The owner can agree to give up the land or can oppose the application.

If the owner opposes the application then the Land Registry writes back to the other person saying don't be such a CF, you aren't getting the land.

If the owner doesn't reply within those 13 weeks then the other person gets the land.

So, as long as the owner opposes any application in time then the other person cannot gain possession (usually).

However, there are certain circumstances when the squatter may gain the land even if the original owner opposes.This is where the squatter reasonably believed that the land belonged to him/her.

This is laid out in paragraph 5(4)(c) of Schedule 6 to the Land Registration Act 2002:

(c) for at least ten years of the period of adverse possession ending on the date of the application, the applicant (or any predecessor in title) reasonably believed that the land to which the application relates belonged to him, and

An example of this might be where there are neighbours and after many years they find out that the boundary is in the wrong place, but they had thought that it was in the right place. In that situation, the court is likely to say that the wrong boundary line is now the actual boundary.

Or, in the case of the OP, if the neighbour had genuinely believed that the bit of land where they built the driveway was indeed part of their property.

In fact, there was a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court last year on just this point, Brown v Ridley [2025] UKSC 7.

The Supreme Court said that if a neighbour genuinely believes for a period of ten years that a piece of land, which is adjacent to their own, is theirs and they treat it as such then they will be entitled to be registered as the new owners.

In Brown v Ridley, they were neighbours and a previous owner of the Ridley's house had enclosed some of the garden belonging to the Brown's house.

The Ridley's were unaware of this. They obtained planning permission to build a new house that was partly on the land that belonged to the Browns, which led to the court case.

.

This is totally different from where a person deliberately takes control of a piece of land knowing that it is not theirs.