Hello, I'm new to mumsnet but hoping to find some expert advice on here from mumsnet property lawyers or people who have been through similar. Apologies if this sounds like legal jargon to those who aren't lawyers but I have sadly read too much around the subject! In summary of the situation, we share a driveway/access lane with our neighbour - it is a long straight lane, as you can see from the picture and their houses i just beyond their passive aggressive speed limit sign on the right hand side with ours at the end - I took the picture from our driveway. They sold half of their garden to build our house in 1997 and we moved in after the first owners, 4 years ago. The neighbours held on to the land that the extension of the driveway was built on (hopefully you can see this from the picture), even though that stretch only runs to our house. This should have been the first warning sign before we bought the house. They also did not put any visible barrier up (post and rail fencing or a short hedge for example) to separate off their front garden and driveway from the new lane. To give some context they are constantly pottering around on their front garden and on the shared driveway and territory marking their land. They leave their old gate (which hangs across the lane) slightly ajar to make us drive around it and they have built a small boiler room for their pool since the lane was built, right on the edge of it (where the speed limit sign is hung) and deliberately leave the door open. We have done nothing to upset them in our time here and they are aggressive with all of the neighbours, shouting and swearing if somebody does anything within their sight lines despite the fact they have half an acre - we all have plenty of land and are not living on top of each other.
To cut an already long story short, the neighbour is 80 but maintains a bullying presence and is extremely unpleasant to live next to. When we go on holiday and have tradespeople in, he is straight over to our property talking to them and asking what they are doing; he is also constantly up a ladder peering into our garden. He is bored but he is also a nasty piece of work and a complete control freak. We cannot understand how anybody like that would sell half of their land and set up a shared driveway situation, as it must cause him daily stress. He literally hoovers the drive and sweeps under hedges daily, he is so pedantic.
This is a long story after all... all of this would be unfortunate but worse things happen at sea and we would ignore it...EXCEPT he has actively allowed his hedge to grow over our section of the driveway since we moved in. It has come out by up to a metre now as you get to the middle and the top, as you can see from the pictures. We have a prescriptive easement in our deeds (for all people at all times in vehicles and on foot) etc and we are supposed to contribute 50% to the maintenance costs of the driveway according to our title register. He refuses to let us and has told us we can't trim his hedge. He pays a local tree company to trim it annually and has told us he has asked them to only trim in lightly as he is happy that he is narrowing our section of the driveway because it will 'slow traffic'. For context, we are a family of five with three young children and a few amazon deliveries, living next to a school and don't commute to work - so relatively little car use or traffic, not that it is any of his business as their house is as close to the lane as any house in the village is to the road/lane they are on. He acts as if we are driving across his garden each day as that is how he sees it but we are now in a situation where we couldn't get a fire engine through and this time next year it may be an ambulance... and so on. He says 'he isn't bothered' and life is too short to worry about hedges, but he spends every day trimming all the other hedges on the driveway up to his house and they are way back from the road. He also spends £300 a cut for this hedge but has briefed the tree company to let it grow over the driveway. I have sent a separate letter to the tree company for colluding in this as they trade off their local reputation.
Sorry about the rant, I know people have much more serious issues. So... the legal question is do we have the right to cut the hedge back to the border of the driveway (this is the extent of the easement as drawn on our plans in the title register), or are we not allowed to because it is our easement and not our land (obviously if the hedge came over into our garden we would be able to cut it but i'm not sure on the situation with easements).
And if we can't cut the hedge what on earth can we do to regain the full width of our driveway legally?
Thank you to anyone who has got to the end of this and has any advice or experience to offer!