I’m afraid we’ve fallen out with our new neighbours.  We have a large house with gardens that were really too big for us, so we sold some of the garden off after getting planning permission for a new house on it.  Part of the agreement was that we would jointly put up a substantial stone dividing wall in keeping with our property.  We did this, but our neighbours now say that it’s built on their land and we are using part of the land that should have passed to them.  The plan at the Land Registry seems to support them and now they’re talking about going to court to put it right.  It’s making our lives a misery – what can we do?

First of all, I’d go back and check with the person who drew up your plans for the sale.  Hopefully they prepared a plan with accurate measurements and this plan was attached to the transfer when you sold the land.  This will be the definitive plan, rather than the plan at the Land Registry.  The law (section 60 of the Land Registration Act 2002) says that the boundaries shown by the filed plan are general and do not determine the exact line of the boundary.

You can view this Act on www.legislation.gov.uk and you will see that this section also sets up the facility for the Land Registry to fix the boundary for you.  There’s more information on www.gov.uk/government/organisations/land-registry too.

I’d always try and avoid court proceedings, even if you have to climb down a little.  Why not ask the person who drew the plan to act as a go-between and try and come up with a solution?  Since you jointly put the wall up, you have the moral high ground as it was up to your neighbours to object at the time if they thought it was wrong.  If you were to consult a solicitor before the building works took place, it is likely he would have suggested entering into a boundary wall agreement.  If the wall is found to have been put up in the wrong position after all, then suggest a little compensation and ask for the boundary to be put right with a “Deed of Rectification”.

Even if this costs you a few bob (because you’ll have to pay their legal fees too) it’ll be much cheaper than being on the wrong end of legal proceedings. You can always put your offer to them, through your solicitor, in such a way as to make them liable for your costs if the court finds them to have acted unreasonably.  But sadly, I doubt your relationship with them will ever be the same again.

As an aside, there was an interesting article published in the Law Gazette in 2012 relating to a 4-day trial where the Judge kindly summarised the principles which apply to determination of boundary disputes:

http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/in-practice/benchmarks/a-z-boundary-disputes