Q: OUR tenant has called to say that the fence between our let property and next door has come down and the neighbour is expecting us to pay for the repairs. How do I check whether the fence is jointly owned or solely my responsibility?

Mr J Fernandez

This week’s question whilst relating to a tenanted property, also applies to owner occupied properties. Boundary disputes are not uncommon and it would be necessary for you to examine your Land Registry records as these will detail who is responsible for which fence. You should have been provided with a copy of the Land Registry records when you purchased the property from your solicitor/conveyancer, though if you have mislaid your copy you can always obtain a fresh copy directly from Land Registry. This can be done online with the cost for the title register currently set at £3 and a title plan is also £3. The plan whilst placing a red line around your property does not provide sufficient detail about who is actually responsible for the boundaries and is for indication purposes only. To obtain this information you have to request directly from Land Registry as this not available online the original transfer document. The current cost for this is £7. This document whilst also listing any restrictive covenants also contains the plan of your property set within a red boarder and any boundaries which are solely your responsibility will have a ‘T’ up next to them for both the rear and side aspects. If there is no ‘T’ shown on for example the side aspects then this means that these boundaries are jointly owned. It is important that you do independently obtain your own document for your records and do not rely on the same document provided by your neighbour for their property. I recently had a case where the neighbour provided us with such a land registry document which was clearly incorrect and only by us provided our paperwork that further enquires with the developer proved that our fence was jointly owned.

The above assumed that the neighbours’ property is registered in the first place, though there are also the instances where the neighbours’ property may still be unregistered. In this instance the boundary may be listed within their title deeds which will require examining to see if these provide any indication of ownership. It may be necessary to appoint a land surveyor if cases are particularly complicated or include boundary disputes.

Once you have established that the boundary is yours then naturally you are responsible for the repair/replacement, though not necessarily like for like. Should the boundary be jointly owned then you will need to undertake some agreement with the neighbour on obtaining quotations, agreeing specifications and agreeing who instructs the contractor, being aware that whoever does the instructing would by liable to the contractor if the other party decided not to pay up on completion. If an agreement could not be made, then one could always approach the courts, though this is typically an expensive option and some form of mediation would be much cheaper.

Please continue to send in your letting related questions to steven@sawyersestateagents.co.uk