Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
IIRC you have no legal basis for insisting that they repair their fences. I'm looking into the same issue as some of the fences bordering my garden are in a sorry state of repair. You're only recourse is to erect your own fence within your own boundary - presumably this is what a previous owner has done if you already have a wooden fence on your boundary.
If they've put up a fence in the wrong place they've done so illegally, the question is has the last owner of the op's house put up said fence and then the neighbours(current or previous) have taken out their chain link fence because another fence is there and why not. In which case the current crap fence is simply a fence previous owners put on their own property and isn't the councils responsibility. If you put a fence down the middle of your garden and don't use one side, that fence doesn't become the responsibility of the next guy over.
The real question is who put up the current fence, if it was the council they can't have a leg to stand on I'd imagine(though maybe that whole 7 year "we've been using it and we're claiming it as ours now" rule?). IF it came to it, remove the fence, smack one up right on the boundary, you get a proper fence and most of your 8 inches back which is probably worth it.