Fence - remove neighbour's or not?

[morqthana]

Is it just "custom and practice" which makes someone the "owner" of one of the fences along the boundaries between their back garden and the ones either side, with "responsibility" for it, or is it likely to be a formal legality?

 

[Wayners]

What written on deeds? Look there first

 

[stevie888]

Most places are responsible for 1 side. The poor devil at the end of the road may have 2.

There is usually a T on the land registry plan to denote ownership.

 

[aveatry]

No T markings then it is shared.

 

[Mottie]

We’re semi detached. We look after our outer and rear fences but when the joining fence and posts needed replacing about 15 years ago, we went halves. Terraced houses would have been more difficult though. Mind you, it would be easier to just share the costs of shared fences as long as you were both in agreement.

 

[stevie888]

My daughter's previous neighbour kindly offered to go halves on her fence. Fortunately a few of my genes made it through to her and she gently pointed out to him that the fence was his should he care to refer to his deeds.

We have just moved and the rear and right side (viewed down garden) fences are clearly defined in the deeds as our responsibility, no Ts on our plan though.

 

[Stuart981]

Responsibility for a boundary doesn't mean responsible for a fence that is erected on it. Generally a fence belongs to the person who paid for it but that doesn't impose any obligation on them to maintain it unless there is a specific covenant to that effect in the title.

 

[morqthana]

Our road is semis, but of course the back gardens are all terraced...

I'll dig out the deeds, and see what they say about ownership, responsibilities etc.

The reason I'm asking is that I think the situation is the same as stevie888's and the right-hand fence is ours, the left-hand is the neighbours. We replaced a section of that fence where our builders wrecked it when doing an extension. Seemed only fair, and the neighbours were quite OK with it.

We now want to extend it on that side further down the garden. Their fence along that stretch is chain-link, ours will be wood panels.

Obviously we could just put ours right up against theirs, but I was wondering about removing the chain link if it made erecting ours easier, and they were in agreement.

But could it be storing up trouble for later? We would have put in a fence which was our property, and had an appearance which we want, but it would be the only fence along the boundary where normally they would be the fence owner, so I'm concerned that a future owner who didn't like the fence could replace it on the grounds that the deeds say it's theirs.

 

[aveatry]

My daughter's previous neighbour kindly offered to go halves on her fence. Fortunately a few of my genes made it through to her and she gently pointed out to him that the fence was his should he care to refer to his deeds.

We have just moved and the rear and right side (viewed down garden) fences are clearly defined in the deeds as our responsibility, no Ts on our plan though.

AS far as I know if there are no Ts then its shared.

 

[aveatry]

. Mind you, it would be easier to just share the costs of shared fences as long as you were both in agreement.

That's where the problem lies when one wants concrete and more expensive panels and the other wants wood posts and gravel boards and wavey edge panels.

 

[morqthana]

Tastes, and budgets, vary.