Shared Garden

[iheartmyboys]

Not sure if this is the right spot to ask but here goes.

We live in a terrace house with a shared garden. It is all one space,too small to be divided.
We moved in last year. The other owner rents out his flat and lives overseas.

The garden is not well looked after and we would like to get some work done on this.
As a shared arrangement can we assume this cost would be shared.
Some of the work is for safety - a broken brick fence and back gate.
The rest of the work we want is some type of paving, removal of small tree which is in the middle and makes the whole space hard to use.
We don't want to spend a fortune and don't want anything over the top.
How do we approach this?

I guess you can approach another owner with your suggestions and possible quotes and wait what he says.

You can approach the other owner and / or the tenant but I would not bank on getting any contribution to be honest. Good luck though.

I agree with brennannbooth, you can ask but you might not get any response or maybe not the response you want.

We own our flat and the flat upstairs is owned by a housing association. The back garden is shared between us and the tenant upstairs.
We also want to get some paving done and there is a shed that we would like removed. We could do this and cover the costs ourself but because the area is shared we are entitled to ask if they, the housing association, will pay half the costs.
We haven't asked them to share the costs yet because we know that they will more than likely say no as the work is for aesthetic reasons rather than something that actually needs to be done.
So, we will probably just save up and pay for the work ourselves.

I would maybe approach them about the necessary works first - see if you can get them to agree to the bits that have to be done. Then, once that is lined up you could try your luck at something like "oh, and the contractor has said he can dig up the tree for just x amount. Would you be willing to go in on that - it would add to long term property value" or something along those lines. tbh, though, I think if he is abroad and not having trouble filling that flat, it may be hard to get him to even respond. [cynical face]

I was afraid this would be the response. Oh well, will see what happens. We just want to make the garden more child friendly so that we can use it. We didn't use it at all last summer.

Do we also need to ask the freeholder for permission?