Legal obligation to declare neighbour issues when selling

[StormCattitude]

Can anyone clarify what counts as something you have to legally declare about your relationship with your neighbours when selling your house?

Are there specific black & white rules?

Arguments over boundaries, access to property, shared drives issues, planning disputes and hedges, would be the obvious ones. Other issues could also include anti social behaviour or other disputes which may affect your property.

It's not those issues I'm wondering thankfully.

Neighbours build an extension without permission, I report it, would I have to declare this?
Neighbours later do further building work without permission, I report it, again would I have to declare?
Neighbours have a floodlight-bright outdoor lamp illuminating the back & garden of my house, it's regularly on from 6pm past midnight at this time of year, it floods my kitchen & bedrooms at the rear of the house, if I report this would I have to declare?

These are things that the council independently either follow up or or not. If not (which hasn't happened yet to anything I've had to report to date) I wouldn't raise it with them myself & make an issue of it, I'd accept they have the right to do something I would rather they didn't.

And also, because of data protection, how could anyone else know if I'd reported such issues in confidence to the council?

I'm basically torn because living next to them with these issues every so often isn't on and affects my family if I just leave it, but when I am able to sell up & move I don't want to be stuck here next to them long term due to having to list every reported thing when I'm desperate to get away from them! We've both lived here for about 15 years so there's a few things like this over the years, would things like this have an expiry date to declare..?

If you report it to the council you have to declare it. If you lie on the property form, you can be sued and it might be grounds for a criminal complaint (inducing someone to buy by lying could amount to fraud by false representation).

Data protection does not mean everything has to be be kept secret and there are exceptions to allow information to be revealed.

If the new owners make a complaint, it might well be resolved by reference to a decision in previous complaints. Alternatively, the neighbours , might mention it in passing. There are various ways it could come to light.

I vaguely remember my property form last time I sold saying ‘dates within the last X number of years’ but I can’t remember how many.

If you look on problemneighbours.co.uk, complaints to the council are specifically mentioned as needed to be on the SPIF.

Educated guess - Complaint to council / local authority, court cases, police involvement.

Yes if you report it to the council you need to declare it and list what you reported etc.

You can put - complaint over planning - resolved, for example.

With a previous house sale years ago, we had reported the neighbours to the council for noise issues a year or two beforehand. They held a grudge afterwards and things weren't pleasant. A few months before we put it on the market I took flowers and chocolates round, was very very sweet, apologised, and asked for a fresh start. (trust me that was hard, but it really helped) On the declaration we kept it brief and purely factual eg: reported to council for noise (with approximate dates) council visited and resolved issue. No need to mention the hard feelings! The house sale went through fine with no questions about what had happened.

I wouldn't risk lying which is why I need to know where I stand & factor in the effect of reporting eg the light pollution vs the effect of continuing to live with it for a potentially easier sale.

Thats really useful to know Talia99 about only needing to declare the previous X years. Does anyone know the number on this?

CockLinnet good approach to summarise like that.

Jazz thanks for sharing your experience. They don't know it's me who reported them but we don't have anything to do with each other since the man of the house tried (and partially succeeded) to rip me off doing some work on my property when I was first a lone parent with a new born. He's a horrible & selfish individual. But good to hear things worked out for you & your sacrifice was worth it!