My neighbour reckons he has right of access (with a car) over my property

[BasinHaircut]

Between my back garden and the one over the back is an alleyway/road. It’s pretty wide at the start and then narrows (at the point of my garden) to where you could just about drive a car down there if it wasn’t completely overgrown.

Our garden stops about 6-7ft short of next doors garden, but the land registry plan clearly shows that our boundary is in line with next door. Therefore we plan to extend the garden and wanted to stick a garden room up there.

The bit of next door’s garden that is currently longer than ours houses a shed that has been there for as long as we have lived there and clearly much longer. There is ivy with a stump thicker than my leg all over it and running down the very very old gates that serve as a fence there. Once upon a time my neighbour apparently had a driveway there and parked his car accessing through the bit of our houses land that isn’t currently incorporated into the garden.

He says that it states on his deeds that he has access. We don’t have deeds as only lived here 5 years so just got the land registry print out. He said that he isn’t bothered if we extend the garden and build a room there but he is selling up after the pandemic ends and so wanted to warn us that it could be an issue if the new owners wanted to put a driveway or garage up the end of their garden.

Fair enough for him to tell us this but I’m not sure I believe him. He is a bit of a know-all and likes to tell us how things are. The land in the alley/road (outside of all of the boundaries) is unclaimed land and is used from the point it narrows (our garden) as a dumping ground for all of the houses garden waste (I hate this and is one of the reasons I want to claim our bit back, it’s basically been used as a massive compost heap for 20 years by the looks of it). Because ours is as far as you can walk up before it gets narrower and completely overgrown, outside our house is the worst bit.

My question is how do I find out if he really does have access? And if it’s in his deeds then is there any cause for saying it’s now void as it hasn’t been used for 20+ years?

This needs a diagram before I can possibly comment.

The solicitor who did your conveyancing should have done all the necessary searches. If the information isn't in your correspondence with them, you could contact them and ask.

Why don't you have deeds? Your solicitors should. My mum has a right of way on her land, it's very specific on who does what and how. Her solicitors had it from the buying process. Maybe your solicitor still has yours.

Try the council first, I think it's highways. We had a similar set up in my old house, ours was the end of the terrace. There was an unadapted road behind our back yards which also went down the side of our house. At one point before we owned it, we had gardens beyond the access road on land rented off the farmer, but the land was sold to developers so the gardens went. We (all the owners) wanted to extend our yards over the access road to give us small gardens again but the council said we couldn't because there was a right to access over this land for the farmer to drive cattle through it!

Get what you can from the Land Registry - not just your deeds but also a copy of their deeds. No mention = no rights. However I would have expected your solicitor to have done this during conveyancing and advised you accordingly, so I expect he is turning 'regular use' incorrectly into 'rights'

Your solicitor should have access to the deeds and if there is something like this I would have thought they would have highlighted in during the purchase process.

nowadays you don't get the deeds as they are held with the land registry.
go online op and download your and that neighbour's land registry entry for a small fee. if you then have questions ask the solicitor/conveyancer who dealt with your purchase.

You can order copies of the title register & title plan of any property for £3 each directly from HM Land Registry, I believe.

Really? When did that change? Mum got a copy when she moved last year. The land registry hold one too

We don’t have deeds as only lived here 5 years so just got the land registry print out

The Title Information Document is intended to replace pages and pages of paper deeds. Whilst your actual deeds will be stored somewhere (either with your lender; some still require them, or with your solicitor) all the pertinent information to the title should be contained in the print out from the Land Registry.

Request a copy of the Title Information Document for your neighbours property too and see whether there’s a discrepancy.

Your solicitor should have flagged any right of way. I pulled out of a purchase a few years for this very reason. That set up is common and it sounds like there is a possibility he is right.

Email your solicitor this morning and ask

Just download both yours and his from here: eservices.landregistry.gov.uk/eservices/FindAProperty/view/QuickEnquiryInit.do - you will need to download the plans and the title documents, I think it works out at about a tenner for all. Anything around rights of way would be normally in both yours and his - but just check his anyway, and you can then say 'sorry, that's not what the deeds say'

It sounds feasible, my mum has access though neighbours garden to get to a shared passageway that runs through the middle of a Victorian terrace. And In a previous house our neighbour had access over our land to get to their garage so I'd say its a fairly common particularly in older houses. The only way you'd know is to ask a solicitor to look at the deeds. The solicitor who did your conveyancing should have pointed it out to you. You can negotiate with neighbours to change or remove their right of way but obviously this comes at a cost.

Unless your neighbour has been there since the dawn of time his house should be registered with the land registry in the same way as yours which will have superseded any deeds. Your first step should be to order copies of the registration for both houses and see what they say.

If there is a right of access you have to maintain that or legally change it. It will be listed on the deeds and you could also download those of the neighbour.

Yep, we have similar here. There is access for a vehicle along the back of our terraced houses, with us at the end. If we wanted to, we could insist on driving across two neighbours’ gardens to park our car there. They’d have to move garden furniture, a shed, raised beds so we could take a car over their paved area and patio. We never would of course...but in legal terms we could.
Funnily enough it was actually our next door neighbour who told us and it turns out it’s true, it’s in the deeds.

You may OWN that piece of land (it’s within your boundary as shown on the Land Registry Plan) but you may not be permitted to fence it off if it’s a right of way. Hence why your fence stops short of that piece of land. Or your neighbour could be talking nonsense, because a right if way would normally appear on both deeds.

Ask him to photograph his deeds where it says he has a right of way? And purchase your own copy of both deeds to check.

Also remember that rights of way/access does not automatically include vehicular access. We have had houses where it is specified that it is pedestrian access only.

What @MarieQueenofScots says. If it isn’t on the title information documents (or in a document that is referred to) all of which you can download from the land registry website, there isn’t a right of way. As PPs have said, your conveyancer would have flagged something like this during the conveyancing process within their Report on Title before you exchanged contracts, assuming it wasn’t missed.

Diagram attached . This is from the land registry doc. Boundary on red, blue line is where the garden currently ends and the yellow smudge is where the shed is and where he reckons he has access to park a car. Absolutely no mention of anything on our land registry document.

I presume the garden ends short because there used to be a carport at the end of our garden and you would have needed the extra depth to turn a car in or out.

Photo won’t upload!

Oh, it did!

As others have said, you can get a copy of the registry online instantly for a Few pounds. I would also ask him to text you a copy of what he has to marry the two together.