Determining property boundaries

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Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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I live in a terraced house whose boundaries seem straightforward enough.
At first glance it seems like a pretty standard rectangle with front garden, house and rear garden and the title plan from the Land Registry just has a simple rectangle in the title plan.
The way the houses have been built suggest it's not quite that simple though, as some parts of them look like they encroach on the house next door's land.

I'm looking at doing some work that will go near the boundary, so I want to make sure I don't end up going into a neighbours land and causing any problems in the future.

From what I can tell having had a quick look online that involves getting a surveyor involved and potentially having the neighbours sign something to agree exactly where the boundaries lie.

Now, this seems like it could potentially cause hassle so I wanted to hear if anyone else has been through the process.
How long did it take, how much did it cost etc? Plus did you have any problems with neighbours when bringing the subject up?

I'm currently weighing up the pros and cons of just building absolutely inside the boundary and having a smaller extension compared to having a bigger build and going through the boundary process properly.
 
My father built over a boundary thinking it'll be okay, cost him thousands in solicitors fees and now can't sell his house because of the 'dispute'. Depending on the benefit I'd just get everything agreed. The red line drawings were often inaccurate and drawn on a plan so small with a pen so large there could be loads of 'tolerance'
 
Personally I would either build within the perceived boundary (assuming its fairly obvious) or preferably, mutually agree with your neighbour. Once you go down the route of trying to determine the exact position of a boundary things can get messy and unpleasant pretty quickly. Boundary law in this country is a mess.

We tried to determine the exact position of the boundary between us and next door a few years ago. We spent around £500 on a boundary survey, though in hindsight this is probably worthless and as boundaries are invisible and are rarely defined by physical features ont he ground. Fortunately we have a few elderly long term neighbours who told us that historically there had been disputes over the boundary position, so we left it that.

There are a lot of surveyors about who purport to be 'boundary' surveyors who will do nothing more than look at the title plan and will charge a fortune for the privilege. The law being what it is, makes for a very lucrative but often pointless process.
 
same happened with a neighbour at the back of our house,he moved his entire fence just to gain 50cm,idiot

if you agree with the neighbour get something in writing and signed,
 
mjd said:
There are a lot of surveyors about who purport to be 'boundary' surveyors who will do nothing more than look at the title plan and will charge a fortune for the privilege. The law being what it is, makes for a very lucrative but often pointless process.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this is the sort of thing I'm wary of.
As maccapacca says the red line drawing is next to useless as it's nowhere near big enough to show the level of detail needed.

The land registry docs have it as a nice, neat rectangle:

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Whereas in real life it's more like this at the back

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Basically the issue is that where you have the wall in between the two properties, the protruding section doesn't actually finish in the middle of the two houses, but it goes over to what I would have thought should be next door's land.
If you draw a line exactly down the middle of the two houses there's a bit that's over that line.

The thing is, that's how all the houses were built, hence the confusion over boundaries!
You'd probably only lose 6-9 inches by ensuring you're entirely within the boundary so this may just be the better option.

EDIT. Shoza, can you provide more information that the land registry docs?
As far as I am aware that's all that's available at the moment unless I pay for a surveyor and agree the exact boundaries with neighbours?
 
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The LR will happily furnish you with a title plan at a scale that is of no use to anyone when trying to determine the boundary, but when trying to get them to amend something that is miles away from representation on the title plan, they want it to the nearest cm :rolleyes:

Sadly nobody can send you the 'legal' boundaries as there is no such thing, only a 'General' boundary indication which isn't worth the paper its printed on.

Discuss with your neighbour and make sure you have something signed and witnessed before doing any work.
 
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Shoza said:
Would be from the latest Ordnance Survey data - I have free corporate access.
Click to expand...

Well, if you have any additional data it might be useful, thanks
Set up your trust and I'll send the postcode.

I suspect I'll probably just go down the route of making sure we bring it back a little to ensure we're definitely inside the boundary though.
 
Not sure how to do that!

The boundaries are probably dead on according to that data but if as you say there is a little difference then the best bet would be to discuss with your neighbour and build just right or left of the building line along the house and the garden.
 
best way is to build completely within your boundary. Don't try to build over it or even over half of it as that brings in the party wall act.
 
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