Neighbour and retaining garden wall

[bristoltype603]

eltax91 said:

Thanks all. The plot thickens a little. I decided to spring the £6 to buy each of the land registry titles. Here's a snipped from theirs. With a suitable covenent?

I have them bang to right here don't i? If i am correct as i think i am, i shall be asking them tomorrow why, after purchasing in 2018 and for sure will have seen the plans, they decided to try and mug off two old ladies. I will also raise the subject of how much they'd like to pay us for access to rebuild this dangerous wall.

As a side note, further chat with morhter in law suggest they cut down 2 large oak trees as well as some bushes! So this certainly will have undermined the walls construction by removing the roots and of course leaving all that water no longer being sucked up by the trees.

Well done OP looks like you've got them bang to rights. Since they bought the house relatively recently they'd have known that the wall was theirs so, as you say, they're just trying to mug the neighbours!

(For what's it worth the covenant in this case is called a positive covenant and typically they will no longer bind the new owners, but who cares? It's their wall and their problem).

[PAUL500]

It does not say the wall is theirs, just that the original builder of the houses had to build a fence along that boundary. That boundary may well be a few inches into their land in front of the later built wall.

[eltax91]

PAUL500 said:

It does not say the wall is theirs, just that the original builder of the houses had to build a fence along that boundary. That boundary may well be a few inches into their land in front of the later built wall.

So what does ‘forthwith and forever thereafter’ mean if not maintain this boundary?

[Ayahuasca]

Their wall, their problem, and what’s wrong with access through their own land? They just carry the bricks, sand and cement through their own garden.

[Total loss]

eltax91 said:

As a side note, further chat with morhter in law suggest they cut down 2 large oak trees as well as some bushes! So this certainly will have undermined the walls construction by removing the roots and of course leaving all that water no longer being sucked up by the trees.

If its a conservation area or the oaks had preservation orders on them, then council permission would have been needed to fell them. Fines if not.
Removing the stumps would surely caused damage to the wall if there is any?

[valiant]

Ha!

If it definitely is their wall then get your MiL to push to get it rebuilt. After all, it is soooooooo dangerous.

[eltax91]

Ayahuasca said:

Their wall, their problem, and what’s wrong with access through their own land? They just carry the bricks, sand and cement through their own garden.

The builders claim was that they wouldn’t be able to find a concrete pump with a pipe long enough. Time for them to get mixing on site I reckon.

I can’t remember the latest stage of work, but they are just embarking on a large extension which I think is filling the side
of their property to The boundary and thus I’m not sure they could get a digger down.

[eltax91]

valiant said:

Ha!

If it definitely is their wall then get your MiL to push to get it rebuilt. After all, it is soooooooo dangerous.

I’ll be letting them give me, as the newcomer the whole chapter and verse about why it needs rebuilding before I hand them a copy of their deeds I reckon

[LocoBlade]

As a couple of others have said, I really don't think there's a lot in the deeds you can use against them. Firstly it says "fence" not "wall" which suggests the wall either wasn't there when the covenant was written, or the wall isn't in the bounds of their property so not applicable to them. The best you can really suggest from that is to meet the covenant and build a fence in front of the wall in which case it no longer needs to be decorative.

[bristoltype603]

LocoBlade said:

As a couple of others have said, I really don't think there's a lot in the deeds you can use against them. Firstly it says "fence" not "wall" which suggests the wall either wasn't there when the covenant was written, or the wall isn't in the bounds of their property so not applicable to them. The best you can really suggest from that is to meet the covenant and build a fence in front of the wall in which case it no longer needs to be decorative.

In legal speak it's a 'fence wall' which still counts as a fence.

[LocoBlade]

bristoltype603 said:

In legal speak it's a 'fence wall' which still counts as a fence.

Had it been a wall when the covenant was written would it not have said "wall" though? Either way if the wall/fence in question isn't on their land then the wording/meaning is irrelevent in this context.

We're in a very similar position to the bungalow, we have a retaining wall at the bottom of the garden a bit higher than this one that allowed our garden to be levelled. The house "below" us at the end of the garden was built in the 60s and ours in the 80s so although our deeds are equally unclear in terms of ownership, I'm pretty sure the wall would have been built on our plot prior to the garden being backfilled and levelled, so must be on our land.

That all said unless there's big cracks / movement of the wall that we can't see from the photos I still think the chap asking for a contribution is chancing it big time, especially as he's blatantly looking to enhance it visually for his own benefit.

Edited by LocoBlade on Friday 5th March 20:50

[C Lee Farquar]

eltax91 said:

The builders claim was that they wouldn’t be able to find a concrete pump with a pipe long enough.

100 metre line pump is common, surely it's not that far?

longer is more than possible

[21TonyK]

Have we established if the wall in question is actually on the boundary or within M-I-Ls' original property?

[bristoltype603]

As I said earlier if you're worried about ownership pay a Land Surveyor to do a report. It will only cost a few hundred. But it looks like, for now anyway, the OP has sorted it.

[eltax91]

21TonyK said:

Have we established if the wall in question is actually on the boundary or within M-I-Ls' original property?

I’d love to, but how? She has fencing all around her house that sits inside the wall. I’ve genuinely no idea to establish what her original boundary is/ was. I have no paperwork to go on other than the publicly available ones.

Please tell me how to prove it, one way or another. If she doesn’t own it, the stance is ‘good luck, not my problem’.

If she does, the stance is ‘wall looks fine to me. I’d like to see the structural engineers report that you had done before you chopped the trees down and potentially affected the wall structure and the one you’ve had done now to prove it’s actually now unstable, but good luck, not my problem’

[TwistingMyMelon]

If they can build skyscrapers 60 years ago they can get concrete to the end of a garden

More likely a concrete pump would be more to hire and or they don’t want their garden/drive disrupted

Tell them to foxtrot Oscar and prove anything they believe in

Ironically I bet the wall is fine

[hidetheelephants]

eltax91 said:

Ayahuasca said:

Their wall, their problem, and what’s wrong with access through their own land? They just carry the bricks, sand and cement through their own garden.

The builders claim was that they wouldn’t be able to find a concrete pump with a pipe long enough. Time for them to get mixing on site I reckon.

I can’t remember the latest stage of work, but they are just embarking on a large extension which I think is filling the side
of their property to The boundary and thus I’m not sure they could get a digger down.

What are they doing that requires a concrete pump? It's a bloody retaining wall, not Hitler's bunker. All the gear and no idea.

[eltax91]

hidetheelephants said:

eltax91 said:

Ayahuasca said:

Their wall, their problem, and what’s wrong with access through their own land? They just carry the bricks, sand and cement through their own garden.

The builders claim was that they wouldn’t be able to find a concrete pump with a pipe long enough. Time for them to get mixing on site I reckon.

I can’t remember the latest stage of work, but they are just embarking on a large extension which I think is filling the side
of their property to The boundary and thus I’m not sure they could get a digger down.

What are they doing that requires a concrete pump? It's a bloody retaining wall, not Hitler's bunker. All the gear and no idea.

The quote they have gotten themselves into. Which is the ‘only proper solution’ according to them. Is the dog out a foundation, build a concrete hollow block wall, with rebar inside and then fill with concrete. Hence the pump.

I would saw front to back of their house is over 100m. And gradually uphill. But ultimately yes, just don’t fancy the cost I imagine.

I shan’t be having them using the access unless there’s a suitable recompense in place to help us make Good after the damage that will no doubt be caused

[PAUL500]

eltax91 said:

PAUL500 said:

It does not say the wall is theirs, just that the original builder of the houses had to build a fence along that boundary. That boundary may well be a few inches into their land in front of the later built wall.

So what does ‘forthwith and forever thereafter’ mean if not maintain this boundary?

You are assuming the boundary is actually the wall, where as the reality is that it is probably an invisible parallel line a few inches closer to the shed, so all the covenant would do is force them to put up a fence along that invisible line, then if the wall does fall down it would also take that fence with it! double trouble.

[hidetheelephants]

eltax91 said:

As a side note, further chat with morhter in law suggest they cut down 2 large oak trees as well as some bushes! So this certainly will have undermined the walls construction by removing the roots and of course leaving all that water no longer being sucked up by the trees.

Unless they literally dug the roots out this won't undermine the wall, but the heave potentially caused due to the water not being taken up by the trees may have caused movement and consequently damage to the wall; how long ago were the trees cut down and what's the ground like? London clay and similar is really bad for heave when trees are removed.