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Our neighbours moved into the house next door a year ago. Our family has lived in our home for 50 years, and have accessed a landlocked piece of land belonging to our home continuously during our occupation via the neighbour’s land. There has never any any time been opposition to this. Our new neighbours have accused us of trespassing and proceeded to wall up our strip of land with a wooden fence separated by a series of enormous concrete pillars. These pillars were drilled into the ground a month ago such that they are touching the thin strip of concrete on our land, and therefore touching our foundations and are positioned less than half a metre from the wall of our home. The impact of our neighbours’ drilling into our foundations has caused our entire home to sustain shock and we now have recently installed windows which have shattered and blown, in addition to plasterwork which has cracked around our house. We do have evidence that this damage was not existent before the date of our neighbours’ work.
When this work was going on, and our whole house was shaking, we approached our neighbours and their contractors and informed them they their drilling activities were dangerous as they were drilling directly into the foundations of our home. Their contractors stopped working at this pint. Our neighbours laughed, told us to take them to court, and directed their contractors to continue drilling to erect the fence with concrete posts. Their contractors also tried to intimidate us and tried to stop us taking photos, but did not succeed in that. After they had erected this fence to exclude our family from our land, our neighbours then planted a line of 20 fast-growing conifers (they appear to be leylandii touching the fence in a shallow trough touching our foundations) which we are advised are a reasonably foreseeable cause of extensive damage to our foundations by aggressively growing tree roots). Our neighbours also partially blocked the only window of one of our habitable room with their new fence.
We know we have a solid case for enforcing our prescriptive right of way (we intend to formalise this through land registry). However, as regards seeking an injunction to have the illegally erected fence and the row of conifers removed so that we have restored access to our strip of land, and in regards seeking damages for harm done to our home by our neighbours (this could arguably be malicious damage since they were fully aware of the danger and proceeded in a hostile manner anyway), we are trying to establish whether a PARTY WALL NOTICE should have been issued to drill huge concrete posts into a position touching our home foundations, less than half a metre from the wall of our home.
Can someone please advise on whether our neighbours should have issued a party wall notice please?
When this work was going on, and our whole house was shaking, we approached our neighbours and their contractors and informed them they their drilling activities were dangerous as they were drilling directly into the foundations of our home. Their contractors stopped working at this pint. Our neighbours laughed, told us to take them to court, and directed their contractors to continue drilling to erect the fence with concrete posts. Their contractors also tried to intimidate us and tried to stop us taking photos, but did not succeed in that. After they had erected this fence to exclude our family from our land, our neighbours then planted a line of 20 fast-growing conifers (they appear to be leylandii touching the fence in a shallow trough touching our foundations) which we are advised are a reasonably foreseeable cause of extensive damage to our foundations by aggressively growing tree roots). Our neighbours also partially blocked the only window of one of our habitable room with their new fence.
We know we have a solid case for enforcing our prescriptive right of way (we intend to formalise this through land registry). However, as regards seeking an injunction to have the illegally erected fence and the row of conifers removed so that we have restored access to our strip of land, and in regards seeking damages for harm done to our home by our neighbours (this could arguably be malicious damage since they were fully aware of the danger and proceeded in a hostile manner anyway), we are trying to establish whether a PARTY WALL NOTICE should have been issued to drill huge concrete posts into a position touching our home foundations, less than half a metre from the wall of our home.
Can someone please advise on whether our neighbours should have issued a party wall notice please?
