Unauthorised right of way and land development
Discussion
Complicated situation will try and keep it as clear as possible!
20 years about my old man bought a piece of land, A, B and C, which is nested in the corner of small development of 60’s bungalows. C is actually a piece of the road and strip of pavement adjoining onto the plot.
He built a house in A, lived there for a few years then sold it on 16 years ago and moved abroad.
B is a strip of drive with a wall and trees planted along the right edge (the squiggly line)
He retained ownership of B and C after selling A.
The new owner of A has right of way across B and C onto their property only. They do not have right of way across B & C onto D.
All of the blue is private housing, 60’s style bungalows and semis.
D is a plot of land only accessible by a narrow footpath between two houses (the thin strip to the left)
For years no-one knew who owned it but Dad always has an eye on the future.
The only other potential access to D is across B & C, or by purchasing one of the other houses adjoining it and knocking it down to create a driveway wide enough.
A couple of years ago (Brexit) Dad starts getting itchy feet and starts to investigate who actually owned D, as it was not listed with the land registry.
After 18 months of digging, ancestry, local investogators etc he finds out who owns it.
However, the land registry had given him a bum steer and sent him off on a wild goose chase, it transpires that the current owner only lives a few minutes around the corner, a young girl distantly related to a spinster who had title to D in the early 1900’s
Dad ends up being a week too late, and discovers last summer that the girl has sold plot D to the owners of A (the same people Dad sold to) The kicker is she sold for £25k as she just wanted some cash after finishing university.
You can probably get 4, maybe 5 houses on plot D by modern standards. Given that its in one of the more desirable suburbs of Nottingham I’m guessing market value (if you had access and planning) would be in the region of at least £250-300,000.
Now it gets interesting, in the intervening months, owner of A is either very thick or trying it on, they rip down the wall between B and D, pull up the trees, spend a fair amount of money on putting up some gates and have the whole site cleared after +15 years of it being left to ruin (there was an old chap who used to tend to it while Dad lived there)
Dad contacts the owners of A, opens up a dialog about the subject of access and politely reminds them who owns B and C. The conversation has been cordial, but no progress made and Dad ultimately wants some of D to build on himself. I suspect that other family members are involved as the owners of A will be 80+ now.
Dad is in no rush and is happy to wait a while longer if that’s what it takes. I’d be interested in what the collective brains on PH think, aside from doing silly things with frozen sausages, what would your approach be if your end goal was getting a piece of D? If relations turn sour what likely restitution would you seek for the unauthorised works done to B?
20 years about my old man bought a piece of land, A, B and C, which is nested in the corner of small development of 60’s bungalows. C is actually a piece of the road and strip of pavement adjoining onto the plot.
He built a house in A, lived there for a few years then sold it on 16 years ago and moved abroad.
B is a strip of drive with a wall and trees planted along the right edge (the squiggly line)
He retained ownership of B and C after selling A.
The new owner of A has right of way across B and C onto their property only. They do not have right of way across B & C onto D.
All of the blue is private housing, 60’s style bungalows and semis.
D is a plot of land only accessible by a narrow footpath between two houses (the thin strip to the left)
For years no-one knew who owned it but Dad always has an eye on the future.
The only other potential access to D is across B & C, or by purchasing one of the other houses adjoining it and knocking it down to create a driveway wide enough.
A couple of years ago (Brexit) Dad starts getting itchy feet and starts to investigate who actually owned D, as it was not listed with the land registry.
After 18 months of digging, ancestry, local investogators etc he finds out who owns it.
However, the land registry had given him a bum steer and sent him off on a wild goose chase, it transpires that the current owner only lives a few minutes around the corner, a young girl distantly related to a spinster who had title to D in the early 1900’s
Dad ends up being a week too late, and discovers last summer that the girl has sold plot D to the owners of A (the same people Dad sold to) The kicker is she sold for £25k as she just wanted some cash after finishing university.
You can probably get 4, maybe 5 houses on plot D by modern standards. Given that its in one of the more desirable suburbs of Nottingham I’m guessing market value (if you had access and planning) would be in the region of at least £250-300,000.
Now it gets interesting, in the intervening months, owner of A is either very thick or trying it on, they rip down the wall between B and D, pull up the trees, spend a fair amount of money on putting up some gates and have the whole site cleared after +15 years of it being left to ruin (there was an old chap who used to tend to it while Dad lived there)
Dad contacts the owners of A, opens up a dialog about the subject of access and politely reminds them who owns B and C. The conversation has been cordial, but no progress made and Dad ultimately wants some of D to build on himself. I suspect that other family members are involved as the owners of A will be 80+ now.
Dad is in no rush and is happy to wait a while longer if that’s what it takes. I’d be interested in what the collective brains on PH think, aside from doing silly things with frozen sausages, what would your approach be if your end goal was getting a piece of D? If relations turn sour what likely restitution would you seek for the unauthorised works done to B?
Thanks for the advice - but just to be clear this thread is more of a theoretical ‘what would you do in this situation’ instead of ‘what should we do’
Dad is quite an accomplished self-builder going back 40 years, this isn’t his first project and of course specialist advice has been sought and given. Google Earth also backs up the timelines for all site changes - when conversations first started with A last year they had claimed that the wall and trees had blown down 10 years ago and that really they had done Dad a favour putting the gates up. They were left a little bit red faced when we showed them year on year growth for the trees via Google Earth up until 2019…
When A was sold all deeds were aligned very much with this as a possible future option, retaining B and C didn’t really affect the value of A so it was a no brainer to retain control of B and C should an opportunity present itself in the future in respect to D - he often trots out Stokes v Cambridge and the precedent for the value of the access being equal to a third of the predicted profit realised from the land (which I am skeptical of in reality) I might add he’s done this elsewhere too and has another ransom strip going back over 30 years - Dad is a very patient man!
But as I said, the money is not the overriding issue here, it was the opportunity to return to the UK following Brexit, which also aligns with my 3 sisters knocking out grandkids. His rough idea was to build 3, maybe 4 eco bungalows, one which he’d retain and live in, the others would pay for the all of development. This is not a condition or way of funding his return, just something to keep him busy in retirement.
Speaking of which Dad has been very much enjoying his retirement, living the self sufficient good life for the last ten years which includes brewing and selling his own beer to a community of ex-pats local to him. The money associated with this situation is not the be all and end, in fact I only really mentioned the figures in context of the girl - she turned up on the doorstep of A and asked if they wanted the land on the assumption that A owned and controlled the access. Its obvious that neither party sought proper advice here and to me the biggest loser in this situation is the girl - it does make you wonder if A told her that they were the only option as it would be easy to assume that B is just part of A.
Dad is only really annoyed because he’d treated the whole investigation (all done remotely from another country I might add) as a little history project and it was galling for him to discover that the sale had completed a mere week after discovering the true owner. And this is all down to the Land Registry giving him the wrong info.
To answer some of the questions, at the moment, A cannot exit their property without crossing B and C. To buy an adjoining property to D would be in the region of £250k, A is probably worth £350k now. Knocking down A is not an option due to where is sits on the plot, you’d still need to get across B and C to get to D.
@Buzz84 - initially conversations were very frosty from A, it was clear that they hadn’t done their home work, after they got advice became a little more amenable to talking about a possible deal. In respect to a deal, nothing has really been put on the table yet. They are probably another £10k in when you factor in the work to change the boundary and clear the site.
You can access D from A via foot - D has essentially just become an extension of their garden. Any vehicular access at the moment would have to be via B & C. See above for likely costs associated with other options.
I might add I have no interest in this as I was gifted one of his other ransom strips elsewhere (32 years and counting!)
What’s also interesting is that almost all of the neighbours who backed up onto the narrow footpath have tried to take sections of the path back to extend their own gardens over the last 10 years or so, two of the houses that border the south edge of D have also over time carved out extra chunks, one even laid decking and a hot tub. Needless to say A has now reestablished ownership of all pieces of D that were trying to be appropriated.
In this situation, I feel that Dad is well within his rights to just park an old transit or shipping contained at the far end of B, A only needs access across the first 25% of B to get on to their driveway and garage. Playing devils advocate A has enjoyed the use of B as extra parking for a long time now, I don’t see why Dad should extend this courtesy given some of their behaviour to date.
Ultimately Dad has nothing to lose, the sale of A more than covered its original costs, anything else that can be realised via B & C is just a bonus. A are at least £35k in with a huge patch of bare earth on which they can do nothing commercially. Dad has no intention of being an arse, its just not his nature and he’s not motivated by financial gain for the sake of it.
Dad is quite an accomplished self-builder going back 40 years, this isn’t his first project and of course specialist advice has been sought and given. Google Earth also backs up the timelines for all site changes - when conversations first started with A last year they had claimed that the wall and trees had blown down 10 years ago and that really they had done Dad a favour putting the gates up. They were left a little bit red faced when we showed them year on year growth for the trees via Google Earth up until 2019…
When A was sold all deeds were aligned very much with this as a possible future option, retaining B and C didn’t really affect the value of A so it was a no brainer to retain control of B and C should an opportunity present itself in the future in respect to D - he often trots out Stokes v Cambridge and the precedent for the value of the access being equal to a third of the predicted profit realised from the land (which I am skeptical of in reality) I might add he’s done this elsewhere too and has another ransom strip going back over 30 years - Dad is a very patient man!
But as I said, the money is not the overriding issue here, it was the opportunity to return to the UK following Brexit, which also aligns with my 3 sisters knocking out grandkids. His rough idea was to build 3, maybe 4 eco bungalows, one which he’d retain and live in, the others would pay for the all of development. This is not a condition or way of funding his return, just something to keep him busy in retirement.
Speaking of which Dad has been very much enjoying his retirement, living the self sufficient good life for the last ten years which includes brewing and selling his own beer to a community of ex-pats local to him. The money associated with this situation is not the be all and end, in fact I only really mentioned the figures in context of the girl - she turned up on the doorstep of A and asked if they wanted the land on the assumption that A owned and controlled the access. Its obvious that neither party sought proper advice here and to me the biggest loser in this situation is the girl - it does make you wonder if A told her that they were the only option as it would be easy to assume that B is just part of A.
Dad is only really annoyed because he’d treated the whole investigation (all done remotely from another country I might add) as a little history project and it was galling for him to discover that the sale had completed a mere week after discovering the true owner. And this is all down to the Land Registry giving him the wrong info.
To answer some of the questions, at the moment, A cannot exit their property without crossing B and C. To buy an adjoining property to D would be in the region of £250k, A is probably worth £350k now. Knocking down A is not an option due to where is sits on the plot, you’d still need to get across B and C to get to D.
@Buzz84 - initially conversations were very frosty from A, it was clear that they hadn’t done their home work, after they got advice became a little more amenable to talking about a possible deal. In respect to a deal, nothing has really been put on the table yet. They are probably another £10k in when you factor in the work to change the boundary and clear the site.
You can access D from A via foot - D has essentially just become an extension of their garden. Any vehicular access at the moment would have to be via B & C. See above for likely costs associated with other options.
I might add I have no interest in this as I was gifted one of his other ransom strips elsewhere (32 years and counting!)
What’s also interesting is that almost all of the neighbours who backed up onto the narrow footpath have tried to take sections of the path back to extend their own gardens over the last 10 years or so, two of the houses that border the south edge of D have also over time carved out extra chunks, one even laid decking and a hot tub. Needless to say A has now reestablished ownership of all pieces of D that were trying to be appropriated.
In this situation, I feel that Dad is well within his rights to just park an old transit or shipping contained at the far end of B, A only needs access across the first 25% of B to get on to their driveway and garage. Playing devils advocate A has enjoyed the use of B as extra parking for a long time now, I don’t see why Dad should extend this courtesy given some of their behaviour to date.
Ultimately Dad has nothing to lose, the sale of A more than covered its original costs, anything else that can be realised via B & C is just a bonus. A are at least £35k in with a huge patch of bare earth on which they can do nothing commercially. Dad has no intention of being an arse, its just not his nature and he’s not motivated by financial gain for the sake of it.
To begin with, solicitor reviewed situation and confirmed deeds placed control of B&C with Dad and expected and confirmed that A do not have right of way over B & C on to D (again, as was expected) He then drafted a letter to open dialog about possibility of collaboration and sharing the plot, also reminding them of the what the were and weren't allowed to do under the current deeds.
Their initial response was to demand access be granted irrevocably across B & C on to D, at which point they'd consider talking about splitting the plot. Then we get all the nonsense about the trees blowing down 10 years ago.
Dad doesn't see it that he's missed out on a cheap plot, he was fully expecting to have to pay a significant sum to acquire it, it may be perceived that he's being awkward but at every step along the way he's been the one looking to find a solution. But he won't give access away nor sell it for peanuts, and I don't think A will consider market rate for the access either as their expectations have been set by the cheap purchase price.
Their initial response was to demand access be granted irrevocably across B & C on to D, at which point they'd consider talking about splitting the plot. Then we get all the nonsense about the trees blowing down 10 years ago.
Dad doesn't see it that he's missed out on a cheap plot, he was fully expecting to have to pay a significant sum to acquire it, it may be perceived that he's being awkward but at every step along the way he's been the one looking to find a solution. But he won't give access away nor sell it for peanuts, and I don't think A will consider market rate for the access either as their expectations have been set by the cheap purchase price.
Wooda80 said:
OP's dad spends fortunes with solicitors before current owners of A+D agree to sell to him at a mutually acceptable price.
Owner of A then objects to every concievable planning application concerning the development of D
I agree that is a big risk, you've also got a dozen or more other parties on the boundary of the plot which could delay matter. He hasn't spent anything like a fortune, yet, few hundred quid so far I think.Owner of A then objects to every concievable planning application concerning the development of D
If it were me, and there was a decent offer on the table I'd sell, the hassle wouldn't be for me, but Dad on the other hand, we were joking about it last night, living 16 years in rural France has cultivated his patience enormously!
borcy said:
What is it that he really wants, buy the big plot and build on it or sell his strip of land for a reasonable price?
Ultimately he wants to build something, either the full site or just a single dwelling to return to the UK to. He is the one being reasonable all things considered - we know of other developers who'd have waded in, put up a brick wall, given A the bill for it and then play the waiting game as ultimately over the next 10 or so years A will likely change hands again when they pop their clogs or go into care.Planning will not be an issue, homework has already been done. Its just the amount of neighbours on along the border who could hold things up in the short term.
As I mentioned earlier I suspect other family members have done some simple math, seen the pound signs and have shot the gate without getting everything lined up - unfortunately for Dad I think there is going to be a lot of emotion on their side which will make getting a sensible deal painful in the short-term. Its also very unlikely they would have bought D just for extra garden, since they bought A from Dad they have ripped up all lawns, veg patches and borders and have replaced with a sea of flagstone paving (thanks again Google!) and again given their age, no-one would want the upkeep of a garden that size in their senior years.
The ransom strip gifted to me is also tied up in a lot of family emotion, Dad bought a large large plot with his mate in the 80's, they put a road and services up one side then split the remainder into three, one plot each, the third sold which ended up halving the overall land cost. Dad took the top plot which bordered onto a pair of huge, landlocked gardens. The owners of said gardens wanted to combine their end sections into one .75 acre building plot and use Dad's road and services, they offered peanuts and got the hump when Cambridge v Stokes was trotted out as the starting point for negotiations. From their perspective, they saw that their land was essentially worth 99% of the equation - coming back from that to reality can be very hard for folk, especially when the saw themselves as superior to Dad (I think at the time one was a head teacher, the other in accountancy)
32 years later the gardens are still owned by the same families, they've gone to the expense in recent years of applying for development permission so I'm sure the desire is still there to extract value and I suspect that when the first of the two owners pops their clogs the topic will be resumed by the remaining family members. Given the current market and location there's at least £400k to be had by developing the site with two chalet bungalows, there is room for third at a push. If I see something out of it great, if I don't I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.
borcy said:
Why not sell the strip and look elsewhere?
I don't quite get thought process behind all this 'holding out' type of thinking.
Not a dig just not something I quite understand.
I'm sure if thats the only viable option and they offer a reasonable sum then Dad would likely cede and move on.I don't quite get thought process behind all this 'holding out' type of thinking.
Not a dig
just not something I quite understand. As to the 'holding out' mentality, its actually quite sound and rational business sense. Let's use the example of the other plot, Dad invested significantly in building the drive (a condition of planning before any groundwork started on the houses) laying the drains, connecting to the mains sewers, having telephone, gas and electric supplies brought up from the main road up to the top of the plot - even going back 30 odd years, it was not cheap, nor easy to do for a self builder. Someone then comes along and expects that use of services and access should be given to them at fraction of the cost to implement them and accepted commercial value because simply, they are greedy and do not wish to pay you. You choice is accede and give them what they want and take a pittance for it, or say thanks, lets talk again when you are willing to discuss at accepted market terms.
Outside of this context though, land in the UK is a finite resource, its value it only ever going to go in one direction over the long term, as well as a mechanism to extract more value from ones investment, it also gives you an option to participate in future developments where use of your property is required.
And as I've said previously, I am not involved or have any financial interest in this, I'm just watching from the sidelines.
Thanks for continued comments and ideas.
Regarding comments about Dad being awkward / PIA / not being reasonable etc, you couldn’t be further from the truth, yes I would say that as I’m biased but he was genuinely expecting to pay market value for D if / when he found out who owned it. And if you’re extrapolating from my car ownership history to figure out what he’s like in real life, we’re diametrically opposed, he’s run his last two Peugeots for over 400,000 miles, has had hare-brained schemes to grow his own biodiesel (quickly moved onto beer) and his latest ‘mission’ is to get me to make a custom ROM for an old Samsung S4 so he can use an even older hand-me-down Sonos from one of my sisters! He’s not quite Steptoe but he does hate to see things go to waste. That said, he did once have a nice car, a Sierra XR4x4i, he swapped that in the early 90’s for where he currently lives, a beautiful small holding on the continent with several acres of land, an orchard, small lake (ok, super-sized duck pond) a microbrewery and a modern, eco-friendly barn conversion that he’s painstakingly restored and extended over a period of 20+ years.
I admit I have probably used a bad choice of terminology with ransom strips, neither pieces of land that I’ve mentioned are ransom strips in the truest form, they are private drives with full services, they were a necessity to develop the sites in the first place so it’s not like Dad has bought them explicitly with the sole purpose of extracting value from land he doesn’t own yet. That said he was savvy enough to retain ownership of them should a future opportunity arise. And in that case, time really is immaterial, Dad would be quite happy for them to pass through the family, he does not need D nor is the development of D contingent on his possible return to the UK.
Some will see irony in this but I actually live along a traditional ‘ransom strip’, it runs along the front of my house and next door, at its widest point its about 6 foot but then literally converges to a single point at the other end. It has no impact to my house but I believe it did impose a planning condition on next door which meant that they couldn’t create vehicular access to the front of their property, they had to use the designated private drive which is the only legal means of access across it. This had quite a detrimental impact to the design of that plot, it’s the largest house of the five built on the development but it also has virtually no privacy from the rear due to the drive way passing through the back garden to access the double garage, which is facing 180 degrees to what you’d usually expect.
The previous owner of D, I wrote earlier in the thread that she is the biggest loser in this saga, with minimal effort she could have found out who owned the access to her land, she even has a friend in common with one of my sisters who still lives about three miles away! Again I’ll come back to the Land Registry, they claimed D wasn’t registered so set Dad off on an 18 month epic going back to somewhere in the late 1800’s when huge swathes of the area were owned by the church which meant many trips over to the UK to examine parish records to build up a complete chain of ownership. If the Land Registry had told him that it was owned by someone who lived five minutes around the corner all this would be academic and I dare say he’d have broken ground by now and be somewhere on the way to roof plate.
As for other access, practically you cannot do anything with A to grant vehicular access to D. All of the other dwellings around the boundary are 60’s style bungalows where the drive ways between them are barely wide enough for a modern car, let alone wide enough to create a viable alternate route into D. The only sensible option would be to purchase one, level the plot, put in your own services, combine with D and redevelop whole site.
And finally, once Dad knew that A had bought D, his approach has always been to suggest potential collaboration. But it’s not Dad who has damaged someone else’s property (removing wall, fence and trees that they didn’t own) lied (about when they the gates had been put up) been deceitful (cleared site after they knew they had no right of way) or made unreasonable demands (demanding full access before willing to engage in any conversation about the future of the plot) Hence the whole point of the thread: what would you do, to the folks who do have a practical / professional perspective on this subject and not one built up from an individual moral perspective as to what’s right, wrong or how one should live their life…
I know, I’m jesting, this is PH after all so thanks for the good and the bad!
Regarding comments about Dad being awkward / PIA / not being reasonable etc, you couldn’t be further from the truth, yes I would say that as I’m biased but he was genuinely expecting to pay market value for D if / when he found out who owned it. And if you’re extrapolating from my car ownership history to figure out what he’s like in real life, we’re diametrically opposed, he’s run his last two Peugeots for over 400,000 miles, has had hare-brained schemes to grow his own biodiesel (quickly moved onto beer) and his latest ‘mission’ is to get me to make a custom ROM for an old Samsung S4 so he can use an even older hand-me-down Sonos from one of my sisters! He’s not quite Steptoe but he does hate to see things go to waste. That said, he did once have a nice car, a Sierra XR4x4i, he swapped that in the early 90’s for where he currently lives, a beautiful small holding on the continent with several acres of land, an orchard, small lake (ok, super-sized duck pond) a microbrewery and a modern, eco-friendly barn conversion that he’s painstakingly restored and extended over a period of 20+ years.
I admit I have probably used a bad choice of terminology with ransom strips, neither pieces of land that I’ve mentioned are ransom strips in the truest form, they are private drives with full services, they were a necessity to develop the sites in the first place so it’s not like Dad has bought them explicitly with the sole purpose of extracting value from land he doesn’t own yet. That said he was savvy enough to retain ownership of them should a future opportunity arise. And in that case, time really is immaterial, Dad would be quite happy for them to pass through the family, he does not need D nor is the development of D contingent on his possible return to the UK.
Some will see irony in this but I actually live along a traditional ‘ransom strip’, it runs along the front of my house and next door, at its widest point its about 6 foot but then literally converges to a single point at the other end. It has no impact to my house but I believe it did impose a planning condition on next door which meant that they couldn’t create vehicular access to the front of their property, they had to use the designated private drive which is the only legal means of access across it. This had quite a detrimental impact to the design of that plot, it’s the largest house of the five built on the development but it also has virtually no privacy from the rear due to the drive way passing through the back garden to access the double garage, which is facing 180 degrees to what you’d usually expect.
The previous owner of D, I wrote earlier in the thread that she is the biggest loser in this saga, with minimal effort she could have found out who owned the access to her land, she even has a friend in common with one of my sisters who still lives about three miles away! Again I’ll come back to the Land Registry, they claimed D wasn’t registered so set Dad off on an 18 month epic going back to somewhere in the late 1800’s when huge swathes of the area were owned by the church which meant many trips over to the UK to examine parish records to build up a complete chain of ownership. If the Land Registry had told him that it was owned by someone who lived five minutes around the corner all this would be academic and I dare say he’d have broken ground by now and be somewhere on the way to roof plate.
As for other access, practically you cannot do anything with A to grant vehicular access to D. All of the other dwellings around the boundary are 60’s style bungalows where the drive ways between them are barely wide enough for a modern car, let alone wide enough to create a viable alternate route into D. The only sensible option would be to purchase one, level the plot, put in your own services, combine with D and redevelop whole site.
And finally, once Dad knew that A had bought D, his approach has always been to suggest potential collaboration. But it’s not Dad who has damaged someone else’s property (removing wall, fence and trees that they didn’t own) lied (about when they the gates had been put up) been deceitful (cleared site after they knew they had no right of way) or made unreasonable demands (demanding full access before willing to engage in any conversation about the future of the plot) Hence the whole point of the thread: what would you do, to the folks who do have a practical / professional perspective on this subject and not one built up from an individual moral perspective as to what’s right, wrong or how one should live their life…
I know, I’m jesting, this is PH after all so thanks for the good and the bad!
DoubleD said:
Its still all coming across from you that he is just pissed off at missing the sale.
Well if that's your interpretation then so be it, nothing I can say will change that.He's disappointed to have missed out on the opportunity by such a narrow margin, who wouldn't be? But its genuinely not the financial aspect. He is very philosophical about this kind of thing, what will be will be etc. I guess this is where his patience comes from.
ben5575 said:
Well I put my professional opinion forward on page 2. It doesn't matter what the owners of A do to your dad's fence etc, they will not be able to fund and/or sell any properties on D until the access issue is resolved.
On the basis that the right of access across B/C is watertight (as in it only relates to A) then with the exception of buying one of the bungalows with access to D, A are snookered.
A solicitor's letter to the owner of Plot A simply stating that you own B/C, that they have no right to take down your fence etc, they don't have a right of access over your land to D but nevertheless you are happy to discuss a JV/buying D/selling B&C to move this forward reasonably.
This is a classic example of people thinking they're property experts because they've watched some TV/spoke with some bloke down the pub. Regardless of the actions of A, the legals will catch up with them. It's just a question of how far they are prepared spend money before they come to their senses. Sadly from my own experience of dealing with many, many similar circumstances, this takes a long time and the owners end up coming out of it very badly.
As an aside, should A go for planning on D and use B/C for access, they are obliged to notify your father as a landowner prior to submitting any application (if it's in the redline application boundary). If they don't, then you can challenge any Decision. Likewise, even if they do, you simply write to the LPA and point out that you own the access to the site and that they don't have a right of access over it.
Apologies for missing your initial comments, thank you for taking the time to add considered feedback. Hopefully something will be worked out in the coming months.On the basis that the right of access across B/C is watertight (as in it only relates to A) then with the exception of buying one of the bungalows with access to D, A are snookered.
A solicitor's letter to the owner of Plot A simply stating that you own B/C, that they have no right to take down your fence etc, they don't have a right of access over your land to D but nevertheless you are happy to discuss a JV/buying D/selling B&C to move this forward reasonably.
This is a classic example of people thinking they're property experts because they've watched some TV/spoke with some bloke down the pub. Regardless of the actions of A, the legals will catch up with them. It's just a question of how far they are prepared spend money before they come to their senses. Sadly from my own experience of dealing with many, many similar circumstances, this takes a long time and the owners end up coming out of it very badly.
As an aside, should A go for planning on D and use B/C for access, they are obliged to notify your father as a landowner prior to submitting any application (if it's in the redline application boundary). If they don't, then you can challenge any Decision. Likewise, even if they do, you simply write to the LPA and point out that you own the access to the site and that they don't have a right of access over it.
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