Hello all, I have a bit of an issue with my neighbours and the decking I have built over the last few weeks, can anyone offer some advice?
A bit of background: I moved into our house nearly a year ago, the back garden was a state and I have spent alot of time and money sorting it out. One of those things was to clear a mass of overgrown bushes and weeds at the bottom of my garden. After that I built a 2m fence and then just behind it i put up about 30m2 of decking.
Now my garden has a pretty steep slope into the bottom left hand corner and alot of the grass area is pretty much unusable as the slope is just too steep which is why i decided to build the decking. I understand it is my fault for not at least applying for permitted development and I have half completed a retrospective application.
Is this worth doing because I think the neighbours behind us are going to file an application with the enforcement office as they believe my decking is overlooking their garden (it is, at the moment).
The decking itself starts at ground level then as the ground slopes down ends up around 1m off at the other end. All the way along the fence I built sits at about 3.5ft above the decking. My plan is to either put trellis and plants along the top of the fence OR/AND put a planting row of soil along the back end of the decking running parallel to the fence to allow a better screen.
I genuinely didn't think this would be a problem but I guess from their perspective it may be a little intrusive at the moment. I suppose I should have asked them if this was going to be an issue before I had finished but it would have been bloody helpful if they would have said anything apart from "oh by the way your decking is overlooking us and we're going to ring the planning office". They wouldn't negotiate and were really rude about it. I AM willing to make compromises.
Photo attached. it is the house directly infront. there is about a 4-5 metre drop behind that fence into the side of their house. the fence/trellis doesn't block light anywhere apart from the side of their house which has no windows.
PS. I don't know if this would go in my favour but it is a shared boundary and I didn ALL the work and built the fence entirely at my own expense. They contributed nothing.
A bit of background: I moved into our house nearly a year ago, the back garden was a state and I have spent alot of time and money sorting it out. One of those things was to clear a mass of overgrown bushes and weeds at the bottom of my garden. After that I built a 2m fence and then just behind it i put up about 30m2 of decking.
Now my garden has a pretty steep slope into the bottom left hand corner and alot of the grass area is pretty much unusable as the slope is just too steep which is why i decided to build the decking. I understand it is my fault for not at least applying for permitted development and I have half completed a retrospective application.
Is this worth doing because I think the neighbours behind us are going to file an application with the enforcement office as they believe my decking is overlooking their garden (it is, at the moment).
The decking itself starts at ground level then as the ground slopes down ends up around 1m off at the other end. All the way along the fence I built sits at about 3.5ft above the decking. My plan is to either put trellis and plants along the top of the fence OR/AND put a planting row of soil along the back end of the decking running parallel to the fence to allow a better screen.
I genuinely didn't think this would be a problem but I guess from their perspective it may be a little intrusive at the moment. I suppose I should have asked them if this was going to be an issue before I had finished but it would have been bloody helpful if they would have said anything apart from "oh by the way your decking is overlooking us and we're going to ring the planning office". They wouldn't negotiate and were really rude about it. I AM willing to make compromises.
Photo attached. it is the house directly infront. there is about a 4-5 metre drop behind that fence into the side of their house. the fence/trellis doesn't block light anywhere apart from the side of their house which has no windows.
PS. I don't know if this would go in my favour but it is a shared boundary and I didn ALL the work and built the fence entirely at my own expense. They contributed nothing.