neighbours tore down my fence and put up on of their own on my property!

[Pangurban1]

I came home from holidays to find my neighbours to my back removed my back fence and put up one instead with ancillary concrete works on my land.

The fence is denoted as my responsibility on my deeds. They are not shared fences. They concreted over electric cables to back of wooden shed. We have a built up patio area at the back and the old fence was a retaining type of fence.

A large limb from our chestnut tree damaged the fence and we were waiting to replace our other fence at the side at the same time. The fence still functioned as a divider and was okay for purposes. They have installed a very high one in its stead on our property.

So, they removed our property which was on our property and we now have their fence on our land. They said the posts were in the same place, but they have been newly concreted on our side so don't know if they were moved in much. There is less space behind our shed. We don't have pictures as weren't expecting someone to tamper with our property like this.

My husband went around and they said the fence couldn't be put back as it was all taken away. They seem to be saying it is a joint or shared fence and they are not asking us for the cost! Not sure if that is for getting someone to pull up our fence and destroying it or building their fence on our land. It is a cheap, dog rough thing. I am looking a a very rough surface. As well as all the lumpy concrete works on our side.

They must have seen the house in darkness for a week and then went for it. Even if it was shared, they should have waited to check. However, as it was our fence it is something else to rip it up without our instruction, never mind permission.

I do not want someone else fence on our property. I wonder if I should I report the theft and destruction of our property to the police? What route do I have to go down to get them out of our property?

Ironically we were going to do the fences in the next couple of months.

No, the deeds don't contradict each other. Our deeds state this is our boundary to maintain. Their deeds do not have state this boundary is theirs to maintain. We will be looking at the official versions which I have ordered from land registry. We downloaded the shorter online versions. States our orientation boundary fences. Our house was built earlier.

Mm. Ok. Maybe the acquiescence thing is wrong. Will be going to solicitor for the letter anyway. However, the RICS person seemed to think it was a no brainer about our deeds and them stating the fence was put in the exact same position as the one they destroyed.

They did not say they moved the fence the opposite way and it was now on their land although it was probably moved my way , but confirmed it is where it always was.

I imagine people are quite chilled and a bit of que sera about something that didn't happen to them. They would probably be singing a completely different tune if it actually did.

I guess we could suddenly 'withdraw' the dispute and suddenly accept the location if we wanted to sell - I don't think this would be how it would work if you did decide to move. We have just moved house and were specifically asked to document any known disputes with neighbours. That is standard practice now. So you can't just decide that a previous dispute is not longer a dispute, you have to declare it and take whatever consequences arise, such as a prospective buyer pulling out from the sale.

We had a minor boundary issue with a neighbour some years ago. The neighbour removed the fence (his boundary) but the fence he replaced it with was then sited in a 'dog-leg' fashion to accommodate hedging. This meant that some of it stepped back further onto his land, and some of it encroached onto our property, by some 2 feet or so in places. However, knowing that we may want to move at some point in the future, we decided to not take action on it. We had a large garden too, so it really didn't bother us to lose some of it either. When we did come to sell, we were really glad that we'd decided to let it go, since we could honestly state that we had no disputes with neighbours or boundaries or the legal forms.

I withdrew from buying a house because of an on-going boundary dispute - the person selling to me was in a similar position to you and I didn't want to have a neighbour like yours. It wasn't the fact of the few inches of land that was in dispute but that the neighbour was unreasonable. If it gets to the point of solicitors letters then I'm not keen to have them as neighbours. I know there's always risk with neighbours but I kept away from something that was flagged up. It showed to me that they weren't the sort for reasonable discussion

Agatha. If I was buying somewhere I would be concerned if I saw a dog-leg boundary feature. It the type of thing that might cause big problems in future. I'd rather see a resolved boundary dispute IYSWIM

We haven't actually disputed the boundary. The letter would be accepting the replacement in lieu of our previous one they removed and destroyed, and confirm the deeds position. It would also state we reserve our right to do anything to this new property we like as it is our replacement boundary feature.

With a warning not to trespass or tamper with our property again. We could end up with worse problems in the future if we don't do this.

Is that a dispute as such?

I honestly don't know if it's a dispute or not. You'd need a legal brain for that one

I think it's still a neighbour dispute but you would have to check with someone who is actually qualified i.e. NOT me however, to not a complicated one and it doesn't sound like it's one that's going to drag on and on. If you keep all the correspondence and make sure everything stays as polite and faux friendly then I wouldn't see it as a problem. If you were intending on selling soon then I'd be more concerned.

I think adding a warning puts it into a dispute, which might be why your legal advice didn't go that far.

If you have a disagreement but resolve it, then in it's not a dispute.

I think you are already 'in dispute' and I'm almost certain it is a boundary dispute. Also, I'm almost sure that even if you have resolved it you would have to declare it. I am NOT a solicitor though so you would obviously have to check.

What if you didn't declare what's happened and sold your property and your Neighbour decided to be vindictive and show the purchaser your texts.

I would have thought the best thing is to try and resolve it as amicably as possible. If you can I would go and see them in person (hard I know) with your deeds and tell the, that you have consulted a lawyer and are sure of your facts. Tell them that you want to sort it out amicably and suggest that if they sign over the fence to you that you will let the matter drop. Emphasize the importance to them that's it's in both of your interests to having something in writing that ties everything up.

Xxx Neighbour mistakenly removed xxx fence and replaced it with a new fence. Xxx and OP have agreed that the xxx Neighbour has signed over ownership the new fence to OP without any conditions Attach a few photos

I imagine you are more likely to get a positive outcome if you appear willing to go along with this as your Neighbour being 'mistaken' about the ownership of the fence rather than him being a complete dick. IYSWIM

(Remember, im NOT a solicitor although I have had lots of experience of dealing with Neighbour disputes)

Kaddy you couldn't see it was dog-leg as there was thick, 10ft hedging on our side of the fence. The size of the garden, and the hedging itself hid the lack of straightness of the fence. Also, old plots do often have addly shaped boundaries, so not really a concern. The neighbour in question was a dick, but he was a dick hidden behind a very large hedge, so didn't impose on us.

There was a brilliant fence saga before on MN about painting of a fence. The neighbour was painting their side a colour the OP didn't want. OP kept changing it back. Never had a conclusion even though I've seen the OP on here and asked, didn't get a response. This is to the poster whom asked about MN disputes.

Ok. There has been no real advancement on this in relation to sending a solicitors letter. We had the name of a solicitor and my husband rang them. He brought the number home and we rang again, however they said we would need to sign up as a client. I would like to do this, but they are based in a different town and it would be hard to get to them.

Because we had dallied on it, I was becoming worried that were still on our fence line. They had attached trellising and plants and using it for as a support for a huge mirror. The fence is ours alone on our deeds.

I went over to their house to ask them to replace trellising attached to the fence which had belonged to me and they had taken with our original fence. They were aggressive effers and said it is gone, what do you want us to do about it. I said I wanted them to replace it and get me another one. They said, oh but it is gone, we can't bring it back. I said you have to get a replacement in a shop, like where the first one was purchased. They said no. I said I would have to report it to the police as a theft then. They said go right on. He then said our texts were aggressive and he would report them to the police as threatening. They were not.

I said we were going to remove the panels as it is our property and to remove their stuff from the fence. He was quite aggressively said you'd better not damage anything.

We rang the police to remove the theft of the trellis.

Has anybody been in this situation? Bear in mind they removed our fence in our absence and haven't even the bloody grace to not replace a trellis they stole basically.

YOU NEED LEGAL ADVICE - stop messing about and get to a solicitor as you have been advised many times earlier in the thread

Yes. We are contacting a solicitor this week. We were doing that, but my husband spoke to them and kept forgetting to bring the details home to coincide with time off. We had a lot of other stuff on. He didn't seem to have any information from when he did speak the them either, unfortunately. Hopefully, if we are a client, they information will be more forthcoming. I haven't spoken to them yet, of course. We are sending an email outlining everything. We will only be able to speak to them on the phone as they are in a different part of the country. We got the name off a colleague. I wonder if we should get one we see in person or if by telecon is ok?

I can't believe our blasted luck with these types as neighbours. We only have one fence, out of four, that is owned by someone else. Wouldn't dream of interfering with it. If there was an issue, I'd approach to talk to them. Certainly wouldn't rob and shrug shoulders.

My next door neighbour owns the part of his fence that abuts their garden too. Our houses were built years before theirs. That is why they don't have either of the fences of the two properties at their back. Our houses and fences were already in situ.

I will pursue the theft of trellis though. Especially at the reaction that there is nothing wrong with taking our stuff. I had approached them to allow them to replace it without going this route. It is kind of the last straw.

I think you need to have a wander over to GardenLaw forums on boundaries and fencing.

These things never end well, it is all well and good for solicitors to write letters but they are not the ones living with the consequences of it all.

This is never straight forward, it will never be the case that the law is on your side because this ends up as a pissing contest.

Please post on GardenLaw and maybe read some of the stories where people have been in dispute for years and it usually escalates. Sorry.

I just wanted to advise anyone in this situation to check if their house insurance policy has legal cover.
If so, go through your legal cover and keep an email/letter chain of all communications
They have broken the law by taking down your fence but legally you will need to follow a certain process which they will advise on.

@jane369 this thread is 2 years old, I am sure it has been sorted by now.

@Pangurban1 as its been raised, what was the outcome?