I wonder if anyone can offer advice please?
We live in a terraced house, and unusually we share a pitched roof with our neighbour. The top one third of the roof lies over the neighbour's kitchen extension, and the bottom two thirds is over our kitchen extension.
The roof leaks when it rains. We have had a roofer look over it, and he replaced all the misaligned and broken tiles on our part of the roof to try to stop the leak, but without success. He commented that the tiles on the neighbour's roof are in a worse condition than ours, and so the leaks could be getting in under their tiles, running down the felt, and getting into the kitchen through any holes in the felt. He also said that the felt (which is the old bitumen type) is old and deteriorating, and that ideally we should have the roof refelted.
Our neighbour is a commercial enterprise, not a private home owner. We approached them about it, and they keep saying they will send someone to look at the roof, but so far they haven't. We think they're not too keen to have it done. We've suggested that we pay for the scaffolding and for two thirds of the roofing cost, if they want to just pay their third, but they still don't seem too enthusiastic.
So we're wondering a couple of things. Do we have a legal right to ask the neighbours to fix their part of the roof? Or alternatively, could we do something to stop the water running from their roof into our ceiling, like install a gutter in our roof just underneath the neighbour's part to catch the water, and then have just our roof refelted? My hubby's idea:-; I know it would look a bit unusual, but maybe that would do the trick?
Any advice very welcome!
Many thanks.
We live in a terraced house, and unusually we share a pitched roof with our neighbour. The top one third of the roof lies over the neighbour's kitchen extension, and the bottom two thirds is over our kitchen extension.
The roof leaks when it rains. We have had a roofer look over it, and he replaced all the misaligned and broken tiles on our part of the roof to try to stop the leak, but without success. He commented that the tiles on the neighbour's roof are in a worse condition than ours, and so the leaks could be getting in under their tiles, running down the felt, and getting into the kitchen through any holes in the felt. He also said that the felt (which is the old bitumen type) is old and deteriorating, and that ideally we should have the roof refelted.
Our neighbour is a commercial enterprise, not a private home owner. We approached them about it, and they keep saying they will send someone to look at the roof, but so far they haven't. We think they're not too keen to have it done. We've suggested that we pay for the scaffolding and for two thirds of the roofing cost, if they want to just pay their third, but they still don't seem too enthusiastic.
So we're wondering a couple of things. Do we have a legal right to ask the neighbours to fix their part of the roof? Or alternatively, could we do something to stop the water running from their roof into our ceiling, like install a gutter in our roof just underneath the neighbour's part to catch the water, and then have just our roof refelted? My hubby's idea:-; I know it would look a bit unusual, but maybe that would do the trick?
Any advice very welcome!
Many thanks.