Access to our land

[Chick3216]

Hi, does anyone have any advice please?
we bought our house and we knew the lane we use as access was owned by someone else. We have some land at the back of our house and turns out we cannot use the access to access the land, only our house. We will potentially want to build on this land in the future. Does anyone have any experience of this please?

I guessed as much or else he wouldn’t be trying to sell it x

In your shoes I would pay a decent sum to get access to the land via the lane. If you sell in future the fact that you have this right would make the house and land worth more than it currently does with or without planning. Certainly I wouldn’t put in for planning at this stage as the ransom amount would increase.

The land has had planning in the past but they didn’t do anything about it due to health issues
Or perhaps it was really because they knew the access problems.

Also, what about services to the land? Is there easement for those?

Yes we suspect this is the real reason! No allowance for services currently

I don't pretend to be a lawyer OP, but I suspect your only option is to buy him out.

If the man is a speculator, I guess he's happy to just keep the land on his books, waiting for the day you finally want to get planning, and are forced to pay. In which case, the best option might be to negotiate now to get a better price.

If he's nearing retirement, and selling off his assets, he might be less keen to drive a hard bargain. Also (and knowing nothing about tax myself!), if he sells quickly now, there might be less capital gains tax than after the election, but that's just a negotiating tactic off the top of my head 😀

If this was important to you, you should have specifically asked your solicitor to check. Were the house and land on the same deeds? It may be possible to request access from the landowner but they will probably charge even if they agree. Are there title restrictions regarding future development or in AONB/Greenbelt/SSI?

It's called a Ransom Strip, and case law (look up Stokes v Cambridge) in the past, although I'm not massively up to date, has valued it at 1/3 of the uplift in value to the land to which it provides access.

So if the land is worth £10,000 as a field ancillary to your garden, and £160,000 as a building plot, then the payment to him would be in the region of 1/3 x £150,000, so £50,000.

We have had a similar issue. The person who owns the access holds all the cards unfortunately, and can use it to prevent you from doing stuff you'd like to. If you think about it, there would be no benefit to him/her to letting you build and access another house - it means more traffic and wear and tear on his drive, for your benefit, not his/hers. I think you have 2 options - pay the high price to change the access deeds, or not build.

I agree. I think you are at the mercy of the person who owns the access land.

You may feel the price is high but they own that piece of land. It will come down to you either agreeing a price to purchase or not.

You need to establish that in law.
What he says may be different to what is true.

"...if there's a right to access your house then anyone can access that."

Generally speaking, yes.

"If they then further access something behind your house using just your land then that's not a violation of any access rights."

It most certainly can be in violation of any access rights, it depends entirely on how the deed is written.

OP, you really do need to read what the deed actually says. Without that, nobody can really help you or give any sort of meaningful advice.

I would suggest that you also post this on the gardenlaw.co.uk website which is a forum that deals with legal issues surrounding rights of way, boundaries, hedges etc. Although, even there, the first thing they will ask you is to give the details of exactly what is written.

Depending on what it says, you may well be able to build a new home in the garden and have access or you may not. No one can say without knowing what the deed actually says.

I would suggest that you start by taking legal advice from a solicitor that specialises in this area (just google something like "rights of way solicitor") who will be able to look at all the documentation and give you a realistic appraisal of your chances.

That's not necessarily the case. If there has been a radical change in the character of your land then that may be what is called "excessive use" but if it is simply an intensification of use (eg building another home where there is already one home existing) would not necessarily count as "excessive use" and would be allowed.

So, for example, if there was no house at all on your land (maybe you just kept some pigs there or horses) and you wanted to build a couple of new homes, that would very likely get caught by "excessive use" but if you currently have one home and want to build another then that is simply an intensification of the existing use which is allowed.

It all depends on exactly what the deed says and you really do need proper advice on this as I mentioned above.

It allows access to the house not access to something else after the house.

I think that if you're intended point is the house then access would be ok but if your intention is to access somewhere that's not the house (even if you have to go to the house first) then it's restricted?

You could put in for a pre-app as the council will give you a steer on whether you are likely to get planning and the neighbours are not informed. If planning is likely, you could start the negotiations with the neighbour before the actual planning application.

If you're not planning on building for some years, you could always offer to buy it from him cheaply, but with an uplift clause, stating that if you got planning permission within 20 years, say, he would get a percentage of the uplift. That way, he gets some cash upfront, without losing future prospects. This works for you if you're planning very long term. I guess he could apply for planning permission on your land, depending on the uplift clause. (Not thought it through - more a point for discussion 🙂)

Thank you. No it’s not that important to us because we got the land for free. We havw now bought the lane for barely anything and all 😊 thanks all