neighbours treet has fallen down on my property.

[mabel1973]

I wasn't sure where to put this topic, but on saturday my neighbours tree blew down, IMHO it has been allowed to get out of control and extremely large, and I am glad in a way as it cast alot of shadow on to our garden.
However, at the moment, it is perched on another smaller tree,and this is the only thing stopping it from falling through our outhouse, chicken house and taking down our new fence, So I am not sure how long that will hold out for. It is currently blocking access to the side of our house (i have to go out the front door through the side gate now to get to our bins) and it is unsafe for the Ds's to play in our garden.

We spoke to them when it happened and they agreed to get someone out ASAP. They have since told me that the guy who does their gardening normally is going to come out and deal with it. And then went on to say that as he has a full time job (in a garage, he is not a gardener by trade as such), he will be coming to deal with it in his lunch breaks!!!
Not only is it a huge job, so if done an hour a day could literally take weeks, I am not sure if he is trained in dealing with something like this, don't you need to be a qualified tree surgeon or something?

I am not sure where we stand in terms of how long is reasonable for them to take to clear it, and also from a safety point of view, what happenes if this guy isn't insured and our property gets damaged?

Also just to add, we are having an extention built and although work hasn't started, we anticipate it starting in the next 2 weeks, and that would not be possible as things are.

title should say neighbours tree oops!

I'd get in touch with your house insurers and see what they say - they may be able to sort it out for you and claim from your neighbours' insurance.

Call your home insurers and let them know. If it is endangering your property and your neighbours are refusing to sort then the insurers certainly will.

I would say if the tree is in a dangerous condition, contact the council to see if they can help. Also, if your neighbours gardner has no experience of removing a fallen tree, he could cause more damage. DH's mate is a tree surgeon and if it's a big un, there's stuff that has to be done. It's not just a case of saw bits off till it's manageable. DH and his mate were 3 days removing 2 trees that were rotten and were obscuring access. If you can get a free quote, speak to a local tree surgeon and get a report. They aren't cheap to hire. A local guy was going to charge £1200 per tree for the ones that DH helped take down.

Please don't take this as me trying to be scarey, it's just tree removal isn't always straight forward.

Hi

we have spoken to tree surgeons before, about another tree in our garden, so I know it's not straightforward and also v expensive, so don't worry gscrym..you are not scaring me!
As the tree is rotten inside, the whole lot needs to come down, half of it is still standing, it has kind of split down the middle.

I have told them He can have access to our garden to do what he needs to do, but am I taking any responsibility by allowing him to do that? I am really concerned that he doesn't know what he's doing.

I hadn't thought of contacting our insurers, but i think I will, they are not refusing to do anything, but it was 4 days ago it happened and it is another windy day today, I am concerned that the whole lot is going to drop, taking our chickens, outhouse and fence out!

ha iread thisas the neioghbour street

and i thought oh my go a landslide

LOL

i read it as street too and wondered why you were so calmly posting when your street had collapsed!!

I just spoke to Direct line, our insurers, who were next to useless.
Basically, spoke to some clueless woman who said i can't do anything until the tree has actually damaged our property, then I will be able to make a claim and they will try and recover the costs, but if they can't i will will lose my no claims and have to pay the excess

What a nightmare - poor you ! how lovely of your neighbours to have such a laidback attitude - wonder if they would if boot was on other foot! Can council not help, this surely poses a health and safety issue as it is blocking one of the exits to your property? I suppose they cannot see it from your side. (I mean the situation not just the tree.) To be honest think I would HAVE to nag - you are obviously far more nice than me!! do you get on with the neighbours in general?

Had a v similar thing with my elderly Mum. In her case the tree had knocked down the wall at the end of her garden and is lying across it. This happened end of June but she has been 'difficult' re. sorting things. Council weren't interested because it didn't affect a public highway and the wall wasn't counted as a structure. Owner of tree had referred to it as being a 'poor specimen' in his planning application but we weren't able to claim against his insurance directly as my Mum's insurance (Co-op) said that it would have to be shown that he acted negligently and for them that meant that an arborial expert would have to be able to certify the tree as 'dangerous' (e.g. rotten roots, diseased etc.). Given time lapse it wouldn't be possible to prove this. So currently have asked him to remove the tree, as insurance say we need to do this before work can start. In my research did come across some info. about insurance companies operating on a 'knock for knock' basis. Think this means that your insurance co. say that you need to claim against other parties insurance but then they say it isn't negligence because their policy holder did not have 'specialist tree knowledge'. Felt that this could have been different in Mum's case as they had expressed an opinion (legal dept. agreed) but owing to time lag couldn't pursue. Good luck

Stickybun - that is really strange of the insurance company! I am no expert on plumbing but our insureres paid up when our bathroom flooded!!! Surely that is the point of insurance, to protect you against these things, you shouldn't need to be an expert!!

Freckly - I wouldn't say we get on with our neighbours as such, they are not the sort of people you can become friendly with.
The situation is they are approx in their late 40's - early 50's, so not elderly by any means, they both live on incapacity benefit, however, we live on a small crescent (where everyone knows everything) and nobody knows exactly what supposed to be wrong with them, they have not worked in about 18 years as far as I'm aware.
They are a bit odd, he suffers with OCD, I am sure of that, as he spends a good half an hour each night checking his car is locked, They have had problems with blocked drains (although it has only affected our drain once), and have Dynorod out sometimes 2 or 3 times a month, and even though they have been told the blockage is caused by a tree too close to the house, they refuse to chop it down. Dh mentioned it to them when it blocked our drain and their response was 'oh dynorod always say that...it's their way of getting more money out of us' . Which clearly doesn't make sense.
In spite of living on benefits, they have the gardener and a cleaner who comes. I don't know how they afford it, not my business i suppose.
Sorry for rambling, but you can see that they are not easy people to reason with, which was why I was hoping there might be something I could legally do.

We had a HUGE Conker tree fall down in our driveway last year. It was our tree & damaged my car on the way down.

House Insurance wouldn't pay to remove the rest of it (the tree snapped halfway up) as what was left was unsafe but only landed on the driveway. It cost us a fortune to have the rest properly felled and then the 12' root ground out.

If it had hit our house, they would have paid. Stupid!!!!

Any tree news - was just wondering ?

Take pictures and inform your insurer. They will contact the neighbour and deal with the legalities for you.

This happened to us but the hidious leylandi(sp) crushed dc's trampoline and swing, the fence and the wall. Luckily it was just resting in the house and kids were out with dh could've been worse.
The landlord of the house claimed for removal by tree surgeon and our damages on his house insurance.