I've just had my neighbour very grumpily complain about the render on the flashing between our roof and her wall. She was actually rather aggressive about it which immediately makes me feel less co-operative than I would have been, but obviously I want to avoid a major fall-out.
We have been in our house for a number of years, and these neighbours moved in about 4 years ago. There is a step of about 2m in the terrace between us and them, which means that our roof abuts their wall rather than their roof. (Likewise their roof abuts our wall at the rear of the properties.) A number of years before they bought the house our roof started leaking and as a consequence we paid to have the flashing re-done. We subsequently had lots of other leaks which were never properly fixed until we had a loft conversion done about a year and a half ago. Our builders discovered a number of cracked tiles to be the cause and they reckoned the problem was exacerbated because every time someone went on the roof to fix one, they'd break another half dozen as they don't overlap enough.
We are fully aware that at some point we are going to have to re-roof, but are obviously hoping that some point can be as far into the future as possible.
Fast forward to now, and the neighbour is upset because the render on the flashing is now looking worse for wear and it goes into her wall. At the moment, there are no problems with leaks or damp in either property. She was also upset about how when we had our loft conversion done, she had asked if I would be okay if they took advantage of our scaffolding to have their barge boards replaced. (She asked several months before the work started and before we even knew who the builder would be). I agreed without any hesitation, but she didn't follow it up with either our builders (and they were here day in/day out for 4 months) or anyone else so it didn't happen. Apparently it's my fault that she's now going to have to pay for her own scaffolding to get it done!
My suspicion is that she wants us to fix the render so that we pay for more scaffolding, but maybe that's me just being cynical. Given past experience, I'm also concerned to not have any further repairs done to our roof unless essential. I don't want to accelerate the need for a new roof if I can avoid it.
It then occurred to me, is the flashing over the join between the two properties entirely our responsibility anyway? If the render is in her house and that's the bit that's causing her upset - should she perhaps be the one replacing it?