Neighbours trees infringing on our space

argentina

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My Neighbours whose house backs onto mine have large trees and while they provide an element of privacy, they are almost completely blocking out the sunlight.

Our house has a south facing garden; it’s small but is almost completely shaded by these trees (therefore the trees are actually in close proximity to our house). The difference between the light in our garden compared to our immediate next door neighbours is stark, it is especially noticeable at the moment with the sun being lower at this time of year.


I know this topic has come up a few times but the other thing that bothers me is that our garden is completely littered in leaves. We have a small child who tries to eat them so anytime she wants to go out and play we have to rake up the leaves first.

I haven’t approached the neighbours yet, I would just like to know where I stand legally first.

Simply cutting the branches that are overhanging on our side of the wall is not going to help. The wind will still blow the leaves into our garden and we will still have a very shady garden given the height of the trees. I do plan on calling around and talking to them and they may be totally reasonable. Their garden is about 3 times the length of ours and the trees are not such an intrusion on their space so they may well be oblivious.

I suppose I’d just like to know if I have any rights just in case dialogue with them doesn’t go the right way.


Thanks in advance.
 
You can cut back the branches on your side of the boundary and give them back to them, that's about it as far as I know. Tough luck on the leaves I would say, there are leaves everywhere this time of year, your child will just have to learn not to eat them.
 
Argentina, its anecdotal (and also not what you're specifically looking for) but we approached our neighbours in our case and they were very amenable to us cutting back the trees on our side.

In fact, the following year they did a fair bit of cutting back on their side.
Has made the world of difference to our garden. (obviously not all neighbours will be the same)

I heard the same view as wbbs above, but am not sure how hard and fast that is. In fact we had a chat with the neighbours first, with the backup of finding the legal view later if needed.
 
wbbs is correct. This topic has been covered many times here previously. Try the search facility.
 
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