Neighbours got contractor to remove panels from my fence

[Finemjen]

Thoughts please. Fence was built on my side of the property line in the same place as previous one that had deteriorated, and I paid for it - neighbour was aware l as I gave her the land survey and we talked about it going back in exactly the same place as the old fence for several weeks beforehand, gave her 24 hours notice of fence installation and requested access we needed to her property. Unbeknown to me, my neighbour had contacted our contractor who had installed the fence and told him to remove fence panels - and he did! Without asking me. I was working from home and heard a drill, looked out of window and saw him do it, and then walk off with the panels. He’d parked round the corner so I wouldn’t see him. Can’t believe it! What would you do?

Is it back?

This would have been nice, but she definitely asked him to remove them and that’s it.

Update - he has now put them back after lots of texts / calls!! What a nightmare. Still shocked at what’s happened. Neighbour still thinks she was right and her side of our fence is hers so currently working through that with her and getting security cameras installed. Thanks everyone!

Meant to say, is it still theft if he returned and attached them where they were before?

I think with theft you need to have an intention to permanently deprive someone of something. It doesn’t feel like theft as he put them back and could blame it on confusion caused by neighbour. I don’t think the police, for example, would have any interest.

Of course it was theft.

What a daft woman your neighbour is. I don’t understand it. I appreciate a neighbour owns one boundary - there’s a few houses at the end I of our street and they have multi coloured fences as they’re rigidly sticking to ownership rules and only painting their own fences.

my little tow up at the top all get along, and we’ve all replace one boundary in the last five years or so, and all got our gardens updated. We all just painted (so preserved) all our sides of every fence. Been a. Few touch up jobs needed, but we had a chat before hand and all just agreed to it so our fences are the same colours when we’re in our gardens (so when I sit in my garden I see my cream colour all round, neighbours see their brown, other neighbour sees her turquoise fence etc).

No way should that contractor have even entertained her requests. I think now he’s out them back it’s no longer classed as theft. If neighbour continues like this, it’s a nuisance claim in tort. But that’s very expensive from a legal costs pov. I’d definitely put cameras up in case she decides to damage it and claims it was accidental. Try and not let her see when the cameras are going up. Might need to be careful about angle of cameras too so you don’t get accused of invading her privacy.