Expert advice from Gardner Leader on how to resolve boundary disputes

It is rare that any dispute has the ability to impact your day-to-day life as much as a boundary dispute, writes Daniel Smith from Gardner Leader.

A home is a place that people live, and increasingly work. It can be difficult not to become extremely frustrated by a situation and unless handled delicately such disputes can escalate quickly into a situation where you can feel under siege.

What is a boundary?

As with most English land law concepts, it may seem strange, but the legal position of a boundary is not necessarily the same as the physical structures.

Physical boundaries, such as hedges or fences, divide land into visually separate ‘parcels’.

Legal boundaries do not necessarily have the benefit of being visible.

This distinction can also give rise to claims for adverse possession over land where the physical boundaries have been in situ for more than a decade.

The exact position of the registered legal boundary is not helped by Section 60 of the Land Registration Act 2002 that states: “The boundary of a registered estate as shown for the purposes of the register is a general boundary.”

Effectively, the Land Registry maps can be used as guides but are not conclusive proof as to the exact location of a legal boundary.

If you add into this old deeds from prior to registration, often with badly drawn plans and extremely crude descriptions of length and sometimes archaic measurements such as roods, chains and links, it is little wonder that boundary disputes can be frustrating and feel impossible to resolve.

Resolving a boundary dispute

The best way to resolve any boundary dispute is directly with your neighbour.

There is a protocol for boundary disputes (propertyprotocols.co.uk/the-boundary-disputes-protocol) but participation with this is voluntary.

Often a surveyor can be instructed to determine the boundary between two properties and this can be sent to HM Land Registry as part of a determined boundary agreement, that should make any future disagreements easier to resolve.

Ultimately, whatever the outcome of a boundary dispute, you will still have to live next to your neighbour and even if you are fed up following this and want to move, the dispute should be disclosed to a purchaser of your property, which could deter the sale.

As property litigation lawyers, our skillset enables us to bring disputes into a professional setting and we seek to remove the emotional element from the conflict, which is often detrimental to finding a solution.

If the two neighbours cannot resolve a boundary dispute then the court has the power to determine this, but this would only occur following a lengthy legal process in which the costs can often outstrip the value of the land in dispute.

Litigation is inherently an uncertain process, both for determining a boundary or with an adverse possession application, there is seldom a silver bullet that will resolve a dispute in a satisfying and cost-effective manner.

The biggest cost, however, is the emotional stress.

Resolution of a boundary dispute is not necessarily the end of matters and a broken-down relationship between neighbours can cause further problems in the future.

Land law can be immensely frustrating; the conduct of an unreasonable neighbour even more so.

Removing the emotion from an emotionally charged dispute and resolving boundary disagreements with your neighbour might seem impossible, but it is achievable and we aim to resolve these types of dispute in a way that allows both parties to live with the outcome and as amicably and quickly as possible.