Legal right to access the side of your house? (with diagram!)

[Lemonylemony]

The house we are buying is built right up to the edge of its boundary - ie the side wall of the house is on the boundary of the plot. There is a door built into this wall in the side of a rear extension - built over 30 years ago - so this door opens right into the neighbour’s garden.

The estate agent said there was an easement that gave the owners of ‘our’ property the right to use the neighbour’s side access gate to access the side of the house & this door. However there is no evidence of any easement in the deeds.

The solicitors are currently working on this. However I just wanted to ask on here if anyone has any insight into the legal situation here, general right of access to the outside of your property if it requires access to your neighbour’s land etc.

We don’t know if we’ll keep the door long term, but obviously we will need access to the side of the building for maintenance as a minimum. There are also 2 windows on this wall on upper stories that will need cleaning!

The current owners say they never use this door. But it has existed for over 30 years. What rights do we have to access this door if there is no official easement in the deeds? Is it possible to have one created, and if there is one created, does the neighbour have any right to revoke it at any time?

I need to fully understand the legal situation here before we complete the purchase.

I dug out the colouring pencils for you, MN, know how we all love a diagram.

looking at the picture, I can imagine that the gap between the houses might once have been a shared alleyway.

You'll need to look at the neighbour's "deeds" as well as your own. You can download both from the Land Registry. Only use the .gov.uk website, all the others are crooks and fraudsters.

www.gov.uk/government/organisations/land-registry

I’m wondering if maybe in the past the neighbours were related to the owners of your house in which case the door would have been used to pop in and out of each other’s houses. Maybe one side elderly? No one would have therefore minded or worried about the door being an intrusion to the other side’s privacy.