The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: sellickbhoy on September 24, 2011, 10:19:03 pm
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Hello everyone, long time no speak!!
hope everyone is well.
Anyway, i just wanted a quick bit of advice from some of you good people
tree/hedge disputes with neighbours
i have 4/5 tress on the property boundary with my neighbour. they are about 30ft high and have been there since i bought the house 3 years ago. They haven't grown since we moved in
my neighbour lives in the 1st floor of the building and i live in the ground floor, they have the land to one side of this tree/fence line, i have the other side
neighbour is now insisting I cut the trees back, stating they should be no higher than the height of the flat roof extension coming out of the back of my ground floor property
she claims the trees block her view - which may be true, but it's an issue that existed for more than the 3 years since i've lived here and she's only brought it up tonight
i've no problem cutting them back now that she has "asked" but it was teh way that she asked that will see me doing nothing until i get a solicitors letter from her. Of course, if there is no need to cut it back, then i'm doing nothing!
the next thing i need your thoughts/advice on.........i have a lot of old wood that I am drying before chopping up to use as firewood - it's mostly fallen branches i've picked up walking the dog. I have stacked the wood up at the side of my house (along the extension mentioned above) and it sits there nicely between the fence between our properties (which is about 5 feet high) and my extension. the gap between the building and the fence is about 1 metre
I want to put a roof over the wood - to keep the worst of the rain of it, so I'm planning on just putting come corrugated plastic sheeting up between my house and the fence.
Will i need planning for this? it won't have any walls/doors but will be slightly higher than the existing fence
many thanks for all your thoughts and advice........needless to say, there has been a BIG argument with my neighbour tonight, so I reckon there will be many complaints from her on a daily basis now. so just wanted to prepare myself.....the CAB is shut on a saturday night!
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Hi Chris
Good to see you back. :wave:
Cover for the woodshed first - I think if you don't have sides and a door, and it's only a roof attached to a fence it won't need planning, especially as it is plastic. I'm thinking of doing the same with mine, but I'm worried that the corrugated plastic may not survive the winter if we have snow like last years. Might put something more substantial on, or just use a tarp and pin it down well. I don't have a neighbour problem though.
As to the trees - would it maybe benefit you too if they were pollarded? Let more light into your garden so you could grow more? Yes, they've been horrid about it but sometimes it's worth doing something if you're going to actually have more benefit than they are? See what I mean? Getting the better of them by doing as they ask?
I love getting the better of someone without them realising it. ;D ;D ;D ;D Being clever about things. ;)
Are the trees actually yours, or are they shared? Are they of value, in good condition? Maybe the Council might be interested in putting TPOs on them if you want to keep them? Then your neighbour couldn't have them taken down or trimmed without the permission of the Council.
Hope that helps?
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Hi Annie
I'm good thanks......I have some HUGE news.........my wife is expecting a little baby sellickbhoy in 6 weeks!!!
I'm trying to remember when i was last on here, but i'll give you a quick history........
almosy exactly 2 years ago, i started my own fruit and veg business - although i didn't start trading until January 2010 - the business has gone well, but it meant all my time was taken up, so i didn't grow anything at all this year. well, i had some garlic - which i planted the year before, some strawberries, rhubarb and blackberries
last August, I got married to mrs sellickbhoy
this july i sold mylocal5aday (anyone interested in a fruit and veg "franchise" - very cheapm all areas except falkirkm, west lothian edinburgh and fife available!
so, this winter, i am back to preparing the raised beds, scrounging another greenhouse, and planning to get my chickens in - FINALLY
anyway, i should be back a bit more often now :-)
as for the trees...they are mine (they are on my side of the fenceline anyway!)
but they don't block any sunlight from my garden really, due to the position of the house - they actually nicely enclose my garden and from late morning to sunset, the sun comes nicely into my garden - of course, this blocks light from her garden but NOT from her house - as it is above mine.
also, the top half of the garden nearer the house is for practical thigns like BBQ;s, hot tubs and mohitos on sunny days, hanging washing up - it's just a smal area and the big "growing" part of the garden is about 50 yards away from the house on the other side of the garage/driveway
i don't think i'd get a tree protection order - there is nothing special about them - and living in the country, we are surrounded by trees, so cropping one won't upset the environment too much!
as for the woodshed........store.......i had one on the other side of the extension last year and when the snow came off the roof, it went straight through the plastic - wood was soaked. plastic destroyed
so this year, as well us putting a lot more struts under the plastic to support it, i am also putting some old scaffold boards on top of the plastic to protect it if the snow comes again
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No question.
Id organise to get the trees cut and ask them to go halfs for the cost as a starting point, and work back.
Loosing ( or trimmings of) a tree or two (if they dont actually serve any purpose at that height) is the least of your worries compared to living with a neighbour that hates your guts and makes everything impossible.
Trim the trees and put them in your new shelter :)
Baz
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cheers Baz
but to be honest, if not cutting the trees down makes her life a misery - then i'm all for it!
i haven't exchanged a word with her since the last really bad snowfall in feb - when she came to complain about me allowing a neighbour to park outside my house (on the public highway) as they were unable to get into their own driveway (100 yard long driveway under 3ft of snow and they had spent the previous night sleeping in their car on the A9 as they struggled to drive back here from inverness)
i'm quite prepared to put up with her being a (expletive deleted!)
it won't affect my life one way or another
however, if I am required by law to do it, then i will.
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Ooh, congrats, Chris! We will need photos of both the wedding and the baby when he arrives (he? baby sellickBHOY?)
I agree with Baz, I'd cut them back and keep peace with the neighbours. But I think you'd be surprised what trees the council put TPOs on. I still have a wee plot up the road and on applying for planning they sent an environmentalist out to check the site when one of my neighbours up there decided the three old Beech trees should stay put. So now we are in the process of trying again - with TPOs on those three and also a Larch tree that I planted the year John died - 2003! We have re-jigged the layout to put in an L shaped house and hopefully will be allowed to take the larch down if we put in a planting plan. So if you want an excuse to keep them I'd check with the Council.
So what are you doing instead of the veg boxes now? Pop round and have a chat sometime.
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it cant just be the trees that has caused her to fester or the car parked
i know the area and 3 trees wont be missed but if it were me i would not touch them
:farmer:
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it cant just be the trees that has caused her to fester or the car parked
i know the area and 3 trees wont be missed but if it were me i would not touch them
:farmer:
3 beech trees that continually drop their branches all over our lane up there wouldn't 't be missed either(see below) - didn't stop my interfering neighbour speaking to the council and suggesting they put TPOs on them
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Neighbours are only put on this earth to complain!!! >:(
Unfortunately I can really understand your situation as we have had car parking complaints and environmental health re our chooks. Needless to say EH were amazing and have now closed the case and we still have our chooks!! I have now concluded that she must be 'off her heid' as she has accused us of covering her car in dust from our feed bags in the summer despite living in an area where tractors and buses are kicking up stoor all day long. Then she decided that the starlings were only sitting on her overhead power cables because we have hens???
To be honest if she only complained about one thing I maybe would take her seriously but as she is a 'serial complainer' I take no notice. If I listened to her every complaint and took it seriously I would have no time in a day to do anything else.
I have no advice for you but have every sympathy for your situation. Sounds like you too have stumbled upon the 'busybody' of the community. :(
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Hiya Chris - glad you're doing well and CONGRATULATIONS to both of you :-*
I know what you mean about just letting her get on with it and not taking notice, but Mrs SB will have to spend a fair bit of time at home once the baby arrives and don't underestimate exactly how much hell nasty neighbours can bestow upon you :-\ Talking from experience here ;) I couldn't even let my kids out to play because of mad claims my 'nutter next door' was making >:( and it always seems worse when you're tired or stressed (both of which you WILL be once the new baby arrives)
If you can find any way back to a better relationship with her - it would be worth doing, honest ! I'm very stubborn when I want to be, but it's very easy to get bogged down with this kind of dispute and before you know it there's this overwhelming feeling of resentment and negativity - it does impact on your life eventually.
What are you going to gain by fighting about this anyway ? A moral victory ? Knowing that you 'won' ? Is it really worth all the aggro ? Don't want to offend you, but that's the way I see it ;)
Glad you're back and look forward to seeing some piccies :wave:
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but to be honest, if not cutting the trees down makes her life a misery - then i'm all for it!
??
Why??
Be the bigger man sellickbhoy. Be gracious and act with kindness in your heart :love: :love: :love:
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Ok this wasn't my area when I was in law but if my student memory (and we are talking English law not Scots)serves me correctly your neighbour is entitled to cut back any part of the trees that overhang her land but she must return the cut branches to you.
Let her go to a solicitor and then be all reasonableness and light. Offer to go to mediation on the basis she will have to pay for this and smile sweetly throughout. You could even offer to cut back the overhanging branches for her if she pays the costs but my guess is she will give up long before things reach this stage.
But before starting on this do make sure that your wife is happy about the potential fall out. I have been in a house with a small baby and a complaining neighbour next door and it isn't a pleasant experience.
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If it's a hedge, you can be forced to reduce the height. If it's trees, the neighbour can remove (and return to you) any overhanging branches.
I wonder if the issue is where the light is - ie the trees might provide amenity to your garden but block sunlight to her garden. It is reasonable of you to want to keep the trees; however it is also reasonable of her to request that they are trimmed back so that either light can filter through between branches or the height is such that she still gets light into her garden.
It sounds as though the way the complaint has been presented has made matters a lot worse but you definitely need to put that to one side. On this occasion at least. You have way more important stuff to be sweating about right now with wee un on the way! The temptation is to say ';yes exactly and im not doing it, but actually you dont lose face by doing it; only you can make you feel like you have 'lost'',
So....I would speak to said neighbour and find out whether it is the height or just the density of the trees that is causing a problem, and then I would do some work on them to address the concerns. Not because you perhaps legally have to but because they are your trees and she feels they are spoiling her garden and because we all want a quiet life. And photograph before and after to show what they were like.
OF course if you do this and then it is followed by other, ever more spurious complaints, then you will have the moral high ground to then say, Im sorry but you are not being reasonable.
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I once had a neighbour whose tree grew to block all sunlight from my garden apart from one 5' square in the corner by the back step for about two hours a day (in the summer, no sunlight at all winter.) (Mine wasn't a very large garden and it was a very large tree!) I investigated what were my options and was told that in England there is no 'right to light' and that as the tree did not overhang my garden there was absolutely nothing I could do.
So if you want to play hard ball then Fronhaul's advice sounds like the thing to do.
However, as everyone has said, it is no fun at all living next door (or under) a neighbour with whom you are having a vendetta.
If it were me I would try to have a conversation with the neighbour. I would say that I don't mind if the neighbour wants to cut the trees down to the level of my extension roof and that I would want the cuttings for firewood (if you do.)
When having tricky conversations with firey people I try to remember these two bits of advice that were given to me.
1. Don't use adverbs or other emphasising parts of speech. (This is easier when writing, it's harder to edit what's just come out of your mouth!) For instance, "Your dog has been barking all night" feels less aggressive than "Your flea-ridden mongrel has been barking his head off every single hour of darkness".
2. Whoever loses their temper has lost. If you both lose your tempers you have both lost.
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I agree that a conciliatory approach will reap rewards in the long run. Life's too short to go round falling out with folk.
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If this has come up after three years only and just before you are having a baby I think there is something else that this lady has got a problem with - maybe she is not too happy about a baby down/up stairs and worried about noise and a bit more mess about in the garden etc etc. She may not even be conscious of it herself, its just one of these:".... and another annoying thing about my neighbour...". (Or if she is really a bit nasty, then she will think that exactly now you do not have the time/energy/money to argue....)
But if the trees are blocking the light to her garden it would be a nice guesture to at least reduce their height/density (and have it done by a qualified tree surgeon at her cost), and maybe hope that that is the end of the story.... I know how difficult it is to have unreasonable neighbours, just in a similar situation to you....
Anyway hope the baby arrives ok, and you will be soooo busy you will not have time to cut down trees and argue with neighbours!
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Hiya, firstly congratulations on your wedding and baby, such exciting news :D
Just wanted to let you know wat happened with us, we had neighbours that we ended up having a small dispute with over some land, they wasn't happy we had managed to track down the owners in Spain and buy it, even though they hadn't done anything about it themselves. When they found out we had bought it the 'lady' from next door (said in the loosest terms possible) decided everything in her life that went wrong was my fault, she threatened me with assault, tried to run me off the road several times (once whilst I had my disabled daughter in the car), almost ran up the back of my husband when he was driving my car, etc etc
Anyways to cut a long story short it got to the point where I wouldn't be in the house on my own, I hated going outside of the property in case she was there, it was horrendous! My hubby works bloody hard and yet had all this to come home to every night and so within a couple of weeks we had bought our house in the country and moved without anyone knowing anything about it, we now have a huge immaculate house that we have had to rent out whilst we are busy doing up our place :-\
It's worked out for the best really as we now have land and lots of animals and a fantastic way of life for our daughter to grow up enjoying and best of all NO Neighbours :D but even though I consider myself to be a strong person I've got to say it was hell on earth living like that, and as someone else said your wife and new baby will bear the brunt of most of it.
Some people seem enjoy making other peoples lives hell, our old neighbour is now doing the same things to 2 other families living there.
I really hope you get it sorted, and enjoy all lifes going to bring to you!
Blueeyes xx
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I agree that a conciliatory approach will reap rewards in the long run. Life's too short to go round falling out with folk.
Oh, and many congratulations on the marriage and the baby :)
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I had an altercation with one of my neighbours where I keep my sheep I got angry and told him if he bothered me again I would thump him,not the right thing to do but it worked and he has never spoken to me since. I,m a bad man.
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Congtratulations on the wedding & baby!
hope you sort this tree stuff out with as littel grief as possible - life's too short and precious to waste falling out with neighbors! ;)
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hi everyone
thanks for all your comments
1st of all, i totally agree, life is too short to have a feud running......however, in this case, nothing i say or do will end it. If it wasn't the trees, it would be something else - the hours i work, the colour of my car, friends/family visiting,
Also, from speaking to ALL of my neighbours and the previous owners of my hosue, it is clear - she is a feckin looney!! everyone of them have had a run in with her of some sort. One person I spoke to even told me that she had tried to poison his parents horses when they were stabled in the old stables in my garden (a pretty serious charge - of which i have no evidence to back it up other than his telling me)
So, i KNOW that no matter what I do, she will complain about something.......it is in her DNA.
It is for that reason, and that one alone, that I would perfer to leave the trees just to annoy her. OK, that makes me small and petty, but if I don't have to cut them then i'm going to leave them, because if I do volunteer to cut them.....it will only encourage her.
As to the trees blocking her light......given that her house is immediately above mine - she gets teh same (maybe even more) light than I do.
I know that under scots law you are entitled to light, but you are NOT entitled to a view (which was her complaint)
as for blocking light on her garden - IT'S A BOG. she grows nothing there - except letting grass grow long so she can graze the horses occasionally.
Funnily enough, the previous owner told me that one of the complaints my neighbour had was when the kids were back form boarding school - she doesn't like kids. So maybe she has noticed mrs SB's condition and is already gearing up for the worst. Thankfully, children crying is not considered antisocial behaviour in scotland - so, i'm not unduly worried about having an asbo served on me because I have a crying baby in the house.
fact is, she is just being a pain, - and a pain with a bad attitude. If she had actually asked me to cut the trees back rather than scream over the fence that she was getting her lawyers onto me about it, i might have actually gone and cut them down today. but, i'm not going to let her speak to me like that - especially when she is raising the issue for the 1st time.
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Your reply to our feedback sounds very rational and reasonable. I know some neighbours can be a nightmare, my m-in-law once had one who built a rockery on her drive in the middle of the night to try and annexe it to his garden and put down rat poison in her garden to try to kill her pets......
So yes fully accept there are some mad and bad uns out there! Just try to keep yourself on the side of the angels, as it were....
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Like others,I have the greatest sympathy for your situation. We had the neighbours from hell before we moved here, and when dealing with nasty people we learnt the hard way, you can't win, because they don't have your standards. Our neighbours went out of their way to be vile because we had the use of a piece of land next to their house that they wrongly thought would be theirs. We put up with them for probably ten years and then decided that it just wasn't worth making ourselves ill and moved. There were other circumstances like the road outside becoming one of the busiest trunk roads in England with 24/7 traffic including lorries. Said neighbours actually thought during the preceding 10 years that because we were decent people with manners we were weak. My husband got so wound up one day he actually waved a shotgun at the chap - I found out later it wasn't loaded, but the way the blood drained from neighbour's face was a sight to behold, but I decided enough was enough. When we left they hung a banner out of their bedroom window proclaiming Good riddance! It would fill a book to tell all the nasty things they did, like swearing at my kids, walking around their garden naked and encouraging their greyhounds to kill my chickens. I still get mad when I think about them 20 years on. I say cut your losses, and either give in, maybe after the investigating the legality of her claim, or move on. Sorry and good luck.
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I still think it would be worth looking at TPO's - the council will bang them on double quick if you say you want to cut tehm down. That would be the PERFECT result! She couldn't get at you for that! ;D