New home, fence/boundary in wrong position?

[Wurli30]

Not sure if this is the right place but hopefully someone can help!

We've recently bought and have started renovating a small victorian terrace with a tiny 4.3m x 5m back yard.

It appears at some point in the past some of the fences on our side of the road ended up being installed slightly crooked by the previous housing trust owners.

As part of the work we'd obviously like to square off our yard and correct the position of the fence on our left. As I see it the fence should run straight down through the middle of the houses like a continuation of the party wall.

The neighbours will have to lose some space they've been using for this to happen. Probably about 1 foot at the end of the yard and 10cm nearer the house. Sounds like nothing but in the context of an already cramped space it's quite a lot! They have been owners for 6 years.

Are we within our rights to install a new fence in its correct position?

This is a power keg. You need to read the Garden Law forums to find out just how batshit crazy some people can be and how many years things can rumble on for.

Yes it would be nice to "square" off the garden but this is something that you need to talk to your neighbours about. Do not at any point go down the legal route. It is costly and means you have to declare it at any point in the future you go to sell.

But for fun, read the Garden law forums, on boundaries, fences and rights of way. You never know you are dealing with crazy until you have encountered crazy

The title plan will only show a general boundary. The tolerance of a boundary can be anything up to half a metre, depending on the scale of your title plan.
Your best bet is to:

1. obtain the title plan to give you an idea of what what transferred to you
2. read the Land Registry practice guide on property boundaries (available on line on Land Registry Gov. website)
3. Depending on points 1 and 2 above, approach your neighbour with a view to 'straightening' the boundary and making an application to Land Registry for an 'agreed boundary'. I imagine your neighbour will want financial recompense.

What's on the ground often has no resemblance to the old deed maps and with the advent of satellite mapping it can show this up . its often difficulty to established the correct line and my property other property have non square boundaries more parallelograms evey ones is the same and the mapping system show them as square . they are fixed with stone original walls and has caused issues with some surveys in the past . but its accept the walls are correct and the maps are out .the only difficulty is when some tried to build a extension up to a boundary once and built it square attempting to steal land . the land registry and surveyor stepped in and put it back to the original walls using old aerial maps .

You don't know what information the neighbours have 're the fence. Speak to them first. You can't assume with boundaries.

My dad woke up one morning after working a night shift to the neighbours having removed the fence between gardens as was and replacing it ‘more straight’ which meant my dad loosing out - my dad asked the contractors to stop work or put the new fence In the original place.

Checking the deeds my Dad was correct - the neighbour was fuming. If he had actually just spoke to my Dad before he probably would have agreed with a straight newer fence making sense - check deeds and speak to the neighbour first.