Boundary wall and vent

B

Beefs

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I'd appreciate any help on this.

I recently signed the contracts for a house with my sister. Unfortunately, since signing we have noticed that the neighbours boundary wall encroaches on our back garden by about a foot and a half. The wall isn't built straight but at an angle resulting in it coming into our property. Also their kitchen extension, which is the party wall, has a cooker extractor fan vent on our side.

We aren't happy with the wall or vent and ideally would like the vent removed and the wall straightened to avoid coming into our garden.

I know we should have seen these problems before signing! Our solicitor says we don't have a legal leg to stand on and can't force the neighbours to change anything now that we've signed the contracts. We haven't spoken to our neighbours directly yet about this but I was wondering if this legal advice is correct?
 
Presumably this is a secondhand house you're purchasing. The boundaries are established, you could check the as-built against the plot registered in the Land registry, but what's the point, the previous owner must have allowed/ or didn't object to the neighbours encroachment in this manner. As for the vent, it's cheeky but what could you do about it now, to try and object/ raise the issue now with your new neighbour won't foster good relations.
 
The house is second hand and was rented out so not sure if owners knew about wall being built. I suspect neighbours saw their chance to build wall (and take part of what's now our garden) when no-one was in house before it was sold. Our solicitor suggested saying to neighbour that we were going to build an extension (which would block their vent) even though we can't afford an extension at the moment. I know it won't foster good neighbourly relations but it's very annoying and we won't be inclined to want to get on with these neighbours anyway!
 
I don't fully understand what you mean by your neighbour’s boundary wall encroaching on your back garden but I would imagine that your solicitor checked the boundaries before allowing you to sign off on the contract. I'm the first/only owner of my house but both my boundaries with my neighbours seem to encroach onto theirs - by this I mean the width of the front of my plot is narrower than the back i.e. my plot is slightly wedge shaped, but this is legit as far as I know.

In relation to the vent - I thought the planning laws didn't allow anything overhang a boundary wall, the vent is then surely in contravention of the planning laws, also their soffit and facia (if there is one) are probably overhanging. What happens if/when you want to build adjacent to this extension? Will the vent be an obstacle to you? To be neighbourly you could ignore it and deal with any problems when they occur rather than getting off to a very poor start.

 
In relation to boundary wall, I purchased a site 3yrs ago and from looking at my site map it seems if my neighbour has built part of his wall on the corner of my site. At a later stage can I reclaim this part, I have checked with the land registry office and my site is square.
 
Builder said:
In relation to boundary wall, I purchased a site 3yrs ago and from looking at my site map it seems if my neighbour has built part of his wall on the corner of my site. At a later stage can I reclaim this part, I have checked with the land registry office and my site is square.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure of the exact position but be careful of leaving it too long, the longer the wall is in place the stronger his case for adverse possession becomes although I think it has to be 12 years or so.
 
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