Could there be any issues with buying a house that has responsibility for a private road?

[TibetanTea]

We have seen a really lovely house - a cottage that's over 200 years old. It's a modest house - a small 3 bed.

But it owns a short stretch of private lane that two other houses use for access to the main road.

The public would never go down the lane. It just leads to the two other houses and the one that's for sale. There's a gate half way up the lane to stop people going up to the houses.

I'm just wondering if this is something we should be concerned about or conversely, is it nothing really to worry about? (Hoping of course that people might reply the latter, but I just don't know...)

I have terrible spatial awareness, but I'm going to say the lane is about 50m / 50 yards long.

The water pipes for the houses run underneath this road. When there had been a leak previously, apparently the local utilities company did fix it.

There's no flooding risk in our area. I'm not sure what other things need to be considered.

Would just love to hear of anyone's experiences with having responsibility for a lane like this, and whether it could be a headache best avoided, or not really an issue.

Land title map here

I'm not sure if it's the case here, but in a private road we used to live in we had to pay separately for refuse collection [in addition to council tax] as it wasn't a public highway.

@Whataretalkingabout well that's always a benefit! ☺️

@TuesdayNameChangeArama refuse collection! That's another really good point and thing for me to ask the agent about.

@NeverDropYourMooncup funny you should mention that. While looking at this map just now (all available on the agent's site), I saw you see nearby planning applications. And one of the two neighbours who will use the lane has indeed applied for an extension! Although it sounds like a smallish one story extension.... so hopefully wouldn't mean the road gets too much of a battering - but who knows!

I had RoW on a private track at my last property. There was a covenant in my deeds which outlined the RoW and also who was responsible for maintenance and costs. Can you check if the other houses have any covenants?

Ask the sellers what insurance arrangements they have in place. Used to live on a road similar to this and we had to have £2.5m cover in case e.g. a cyclist went over a pothole and crippled them self. A stipulation of the insurance was that we had to ensure the road was well maintained, so you can’t just buy insurance and let the road go to pot.

also consider the time commitment of arranging all of this, getting neighbour buy in and extracting money from them. You’d be surprised at how many neighbours ‘forget’ to arrange payment …

We lived for almost 20 years at the end of a private farm road which served 17 cottages. After a few years we all agreed to surface the very bumpy road and contracted Tarmac to do the work. One or two neighbours were unsure but all joined in after a few months. We paid £3k for our contribution- this was 15 years ago. They did a great job, coming back to redo some parts at the grass verge but the overall job lasted perfectly and still no issues to date.

It was a single track road so decent reversing skills were needed if you met a car coming the other way.

Rubbish was collected by our local authority at a pull in close to the main road, so we had to take our black plastic bags there but this wasn’t a problem. Postie delivered to the house.

We were snowed in a couple of times - this was central Scotland - and a local farmer cleared the road for us at a basic cost.

We obviously didn’t have street lights and a few visitors were nervous about this although we loved it and the dark skies that we enjoyed. When our children were small, I carried them outside to see the moon and stars on clear nights.

All part of living in the country.

You're calling it a road, but surely it's just a shared drive?

Ours has survived various huge trucks and whatnot for various building works. Everyone puts their bins out on the road at the top.

We live on adopted road that turns private half way down. I would avoid. They can never agree on anything. Right now they are bickering again about cabling for WiFi. The road can't be lifted to lay the cables unless they all agree to it. They don't and have been arguing for years. We on the adopted end have had cables for about a decade.

@unsync thanks - will definitely ask about covenants.

And @MarvellousMable will definitely ask about insurance too! Very helpful.

@Scampuss the agent's particulars describe it as a 'private road', and it has its own name on maps. So I think it's definitely a road.

It just doesn't lead anywhere past these three houses.

@Honeysuckle16 lights! That's another thing to consider,

From memory it must be single track..... but luckily, this doesn't affect the property being sold.

The property (unlike its two neighbours who are totally reliant on this lane) can be accessed on the other side by a cul-de-sac.

So "our" house has no issues re. being reached by car. Postie etc would also access the house from the cul-de-sac.

So it's a bit of an odd situation - access for the house itself is quite easy via the cul-de-sac.

But it has responsibility for this lane on the other side of the house that you'd never actually need to use yourself.

In fact, the only way to access the lane is via two little pathways from "our" garden that go around the neighbour.....

(Just posting map again to help my description. The black bits are just me blacking out the name of the cul-de-sac and the private road.)