Boundary Dispute

[Chelcon]

Hi I need some help with a boundary dispute there are a number of issues surrounding this dispute neighbour has just taken us to court although for the last 3 years there has been a separate case on the same boundary we are suing the original conveyancer as they did not put the lock in or register us as the owners for some 3 months in that time some of the land we purchased was transferred to next door without our knowledge. The conveyancer did without prejudice recognise their mistake but its with their insurers now. The case is being covered by our insurers.
Our neigbour has now taken us to court over the same boundary issue, its a total mess hopefully someone here can give me some advice.

[des8]

Without a lot more detail and an exact timeline it is difficult to understand what has happened!

It appears that whilst you were in course of purchasing the property the seller transferred some of it to your neighbour.
Your conveyancer (a solicitor?) did not notice, so you are suing him.
You have made a claim under the legal expenses extension of your house insurance (?).
Your insurers (or solicitors acting for you?) are negotiating with the conveyancers liability insurers?

Meanwhile your neighbour has initiated court proceedings.
What are these?
Is it that you are in occupation of the disputed land and he claims you are trespassing? or something else?

[Chelcon]

Hi Sorry its a bit long I've spent ages trying to keep it as brief as poss but to no avail


so we are rural our house is 250+ years old with a small outbuilding what was called the wash house to the left of the property where said neighbour lives in there house previously the village store. To the right of the property is large piece of land owned by people in the village. This property was bought in 2005 the house next door was bought the same year both completed just over a week within each other. Our property had a boundary dispute of which aware of and negotiated the price down completed on property and resolved amicably between parties.

The boundary line to the left has always been contentious the walls are built as was a number of walls within our property, there was a telegraph pole which this property received the way leaves for its now on their front drive.

The previous owner built a garage in the 1980's with the express caveat not to build on the land of this property it is clear he did just that, the original deeds and going back over the years show the boundary to be more or less a straight line. He also built all the walls for the then owner of this property.

At the centre point of the wash house a further wall was constructed from their garage straight into the centre of the back of the wash house and then to the right of the wash house a further wall was built in essence taking a further piece of land of some 55m2. The wall had a gate in so both properties could access the land,

our property went through a number of owners over the years and our vendors more or less went into dispute with him from day one, when the boundary dispute on the other side occurred they gave up and put the house on the market. along comes my hubby and then some time after neighbour puts his house on market and along comes our current neighbours.

Sellers information pack states no boundary dispute and both properties own the said boundary walls clearly an argument in the making.

The neighbour to the left commenced from day 1 literally handed over a welcome neighbour card and then said we don't like your plans for a large shed at the back of our garden and that was it game over they have been a nightmare since on everything or should I say she has he is lovely, every time planning applied for anything they object and set what they want delaying and causing us additional costs every time we have had to go to the planning inspectorate who has approved even to lay a patio.

In 2012 planning went in for an extension to the wash house to turn into a granny annexe of course it was objected to by neighbour and with further revisions re submission again objections the planning inspectorate came out reviewed and could see no issue and approved in 2013.

In 2016 clearing of the front garden started so the annexe could be built (yes within the time for the planning) at that point "she" started every day was at our builders or us or emailing me it was constant they even got our builders to move one of the walls as we had stolen 1 inch I kid you not of their land. eventually I started having regular meetings with her on site and agreeing more and more of their requests. This just led her to go on even more.

At that point and even my builder having had enough and it was someone next door knew who lived in the village and had done works for other people in the area, stupidly we thought that might help with them knowing our builder nope.

In the end we agreed our respective hubbies and our builder would meet on site to agree a way forward they did this amicably and all was happy in our house for not very long when I recieved an email from her saying she did not agree and wanted another meeting.

At this meeting one of our last she asked for the boundary to be set another some 4m by 2m as compensation she also mentioned to me some document she had proving the walls belonged to her and I asked for a copy she had allowed the row about the walls to go on for some 11 years with this document that would have proved otherwise, she refused so of course hubby didn't believe her. we were at the same time building an extension to the main house so we took our builders off the annexe and gave them a break. Hubby then decided to speak to HMLR and we ceased working on the extension till we knew the facts.

Over a year later £100's plus spent the biggest pile of historical documents, pictures etc all filled my dining room table, hubby took ages trying to work out what had gone on over the years and yes there was a an application in October 2006 some 6 weeks before hubby completed on house for a determined boundary agreement between the then registered proprietors of both properties. This was declined by HMLR as it stated that there was a transfer of land and the agreement was not in the correct format was just dreadful. We also discovered that next door had attempted to register as a first registration twice prior to 2005 repeatedly declined by HMLR as the land he was trying to register belonged to our property he even put on one of the applications he couldn't talk to owners of this property as they were in dispute over the land?? (yes have copies) and the subsequent letter from his solicitor to HMLR noting the same and withdrawing the application.

Hubby decided to speak to next door and had a meeting in our house with Mr of next door she stayed in her house I sat upstairs Mr saw the information and my hubby said what do we do now he asked if we could just leave as is he recognised we had discovered the situation my hubby is no we need to resolve so we are all happy. that was around the July/August of 2017.

Hubby began talking to HMLR they said the boundary agreement went through in December of 2006 hubby lived in this property and received no notification of such an agreement. There was no resubmission of the document the only document HMLR have is the original declined determined boundary application. HMLR said it may have been because he was not the registered owner and so they didn't write to him but they have also confirmed they did not write to the registered owner either nothing is on file. So they put through a transfer of land and a boundary agreement without any acknowledgement from this property ultimately removing previously registered land and giving it to next door.

Interestingly HMLR note that they may not have written to hubby as not being the registered proprietor on the changes but the registered proprietor of next door was now the new owners our neighbours their registration was rushed through within about 2 weeks of them completing so if the original declined determined boundary is the one HMLR worked off then surely it would have been declined again as different registered proprietors I'm suggesting that the registration gap must work in reverse if you get what I mean.

They must have known the boundary issue as the house was not even registered all along the previous owners were moved and didn't care anymore hubby here was none the wiser so the only people that cared it was registered to them was said neighbour.

In September 2017 the first of many solicitors letters were received in relation to this amongst other things all sorts of allegations its been a nightmare, we have attempted to put in place mediation she doesn't want to but clearly goes on she does but then nothing is heard from them for months we are chasing then it all starts again. She then starts provoking hubby and we then receive numerous letters accusing us of trespassing on their land and police are coming out the amount of times they have just said to us don't worry we can see what she is doing is crazy.

We want to just mediate something favourable to both parties which is what we wanted in 2016 and I believe Mr next door would agree that she on the other hand is adamant no we have to compensate her.


Its with my insurers and that's a bit of a saga at the moment hence advice needed

Thank you much appreciated for any advice you can give