Just to start off to say I'm dyslexic and this was dictated, so sorry if it's a bit garbled. It's a vent / brain dump, I guess. Mostly around others who use a drive I own complaining but not objecting formally to increase use at this point.
I live on a small dead end close of around 20 houses. Next to my house there was an old derelict house that hadn't been taken care of on a large plot. I knew when I bought the house that this house in front of ours might eventually one day be knocked down and turned into a Development. So I've gone into this with my eyes open. Me and that house have a shared drive with five other neighbors, but the drive is on my deeds. The house is now up for development and the developer has had direct access to the road refused, with highways saying to use the shared drive.
I got some legal advice from the solicitor that we bought our house with, and he seems to think that the access over the drive is for the plot and not for the house therefore the developer can build 4 new houses on there and continue to use access for all four when originally access was for just the one. But there's a question if that would be allowed because the easement was originally granted for one house. He said that would possibly require me to argue in court.
I've now put the deeds into chat gbt and it disagrees with what this solicitor says. Saying its a very clear that its not legal. so now I'm a bit worried because my solicitor only skim read over the documents in the appointment. There is nothing in the grant of access that say it's for one property or single dwelling. My solicitor says this wording is needed. Ai says its implied by law as there was one house when it was granted.
One of the neighbors that share the drive with me complains to us about the development, however haven't put any objection in for the plans at any point whatsoever. I find in that quite stressful because I'm wondering whether he thinks because I am the landowner that I'm going to sort all of this out, take all of the stress and all of the burden and the cost of going to solicitors. For what I can see, none of the houses with access rights have objected to our drive being used but us.
I think I am going to pay to see a proper land specialist solicitor that deals with litigation, not that I'm going to litigate because I don't want a land dispute on my title deeds when I come to sell. however I'm not sure that I want to disclose this with my neighbours because I don't know what their motivation for not putting objection into the planning are. I'm guessing because they think I will sort it and I don't want to reassure them it's safe in my hands so they can sit back and do nothing. Or they genuinely don't care and are just venting? In the access deeds everyone has responsibility to pay proportional maintenance costs.
I want to protect my own interest if im on my own with the legal costs. I'm thinking of the best outcome for me as the land owner with burden that comes with it ( this being the prime example of dispite saying we need to share maintenance proportionally, I'm on my own right now with legal costs. I'm concerned primarily about maintenance costs and access. I'm set off the end of the drive at a dead end. As long as the increased traffic doesn't cost me more and I can get and out freely my objection ends. I have no more luxury of owning the land than other users.
Except I have all the stress, responsibilities and costs. Anyone with access rights can object on grounds of increased use and shared costs or even take legal action. They haven't.