Reply With QuoteI would say yes
If both party wall surveyors agreeded that the property was away from the boundary (or vice versa) they can't change their mind later.
RICS should be more than happy to review the case so I would proceed and see what they say.
RICS - valid complaint or waste of time?
Hi - hopefully we have some knowledgeable people on here about chartered surveying. I'm certainly not classed as one!
I'm trying to figure out if I have a valid complaint to RICS based on the following ramble, or if I should drop it and move on with life.
We moved into our house about 2 years ago and love the area but one of our neighbours proved "troubling" (long story - maybe one for the bear pit!).
We had an annexe built in our back garden after knocking down an old dilapidated garage (full planning permission and council visits etc).
The troubling neighbour went ahead and engaged a surveyor, at our expense as law dictates, and we engaged one too.
During the build, and without visiting the site, the surveyor declared that the build was away from the boundary line, so our access to skim the flank wall (breeze block construction with planned concrete skim) was denied. This potentially left the wall open to the elements.
I contacted their surveyor and we had a friendly conversation, during which, they indicated that they were friends with my neighbour.
Both surveyors effectively declared that access was not going to happen without a grovelling apology to the neighbour. My surveyor tried a few different angles but was denied each time.
I then had to effectively beg and give the neighbour money, enabling my builders on to their property to skim.
Once the build was complete, their surveyor declared that the build was up to the boundary.
This makes my humiliation needless (although I'm sure they all enjoyed it) and, in my mind, shows lack of professionalism on the surveyors part, siding with their friend over professional conduct.
(The neighbour is currently making our lives difficult, so I don't want to waste energy on pointless battles when we should be focused on our new children).
(I could give many many more details, but the above hopefully gives the core picture).
Do I have any basis for a complaint?
I'd be interested in peoples opinions on this before potentially wasting time on formal procedures that may have no basis.
I would say yes
If both party wall surveyors agreeded that the property was away from the boundary (or vice versa) they can't change their mind later.
RICS should be more than happy to review the case so I would proceed and see what they say.
^^ I'd agree with the above bit I'd also suggest you make things as awkward as possible for this @r$e of a neighbour you have at every possible opportunity.
Complain if anything will at least wind up surveyor.
I would 100%, and with a clear conscience, drop the surveyor in it.
Further to that, I’d ring him up and tell him I’d done it.
I’m a firm believer that people behave like that for as long as others allow them.
I totally agree - would have to be a very thick skim coat (that's an oxymoron in itself) to result in a wall suddenly forming part of the boundary.Originally Posted by Sinnlover
I'd also check that your surveyor is happy to go on record with the RICS / has reasonable evidence to substantiate that it is at the boundary. If in practice they have merely sought to fudge the issue now by saying it is when it isn't then you will be wasting your time.
Speaking as a quantity surveyor and currently working towards my APC, I know how much emphasis is placed on ‘Ethics’ by the RICS. I believe they won’t turn a blind eye to this surveyor’s behaviour as he has not acted professionally.
I would definitely write a complaint.
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Thanks for the helpful replies - very good to know I'm not going mad.
I'll start the complaint procedure now.
(If only there was a way to complain about our neighbour - just received another abusive "you lot aren't welcome here - should never have bought the house blah blah" text - joy! Luckily all our other neighbours are lovely and have experienced their wrath over the years)
Silly move sending text's like that - definitive proof of harassment and intimidation.......
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Sorry state of affairs and one I don't envy you for.
You may well have a claim against the previous owners, if they experienced similar behaviour from your neighbour and did not disclose it.
Out of curiosity how did your relationship get like that with the neighbour?
I had a difficult neighbour in my old house, no way near as bad as yours but still didn't make it pleasant to live near.
The problem with 5hit neighbours is, once you start getting the authorities involved it needs to be declared as a dispute when you decide to sell the house and move on. It's a double edge sword – report him and maybe stuff a future sale, don't report him and he carries on – but I can understand why the rule is in place. Who wants to make the biggest purchase decision of their life, only to find they've moved next door to a sociopath.
http://www.problemneighbours.co.uk/w...n-selling.html
What exactly is his problem with you? Is it anything definite or a general build up of unsociable behaviour?
And definitely report the QS – shocking attitude to take, messing with people's lives.
How’s he got your mobile number to enable him to send these texts? Not something I would normally give out to someone whom I don’t get along with.
Forwarded to my BIL, who is a RICS member.
As far as vengeance goes - if your neighbour ever puts his house on the market, spend £500 on a ratty old ice-cream van, and park it in your driveway.
It will probably knock £10,000 off the value of his house, and might even put people off at the first viewing.
If push comes to shove - tell him you'll sell him the van for £10k
Ahhh - the history - I'll keep it short......
We bought the house from the children of the sadly deceased parents, so no comeback on the undeclared neighbours issue.
The neighbours (lets call them N1) stated from the off that the alley between my and our friendly neighbour (N2) belonged to them. They stated that to our surveyor who doubted their claim. We moved in, N1 was all friendly but noticeably nosey and not speaking to other neighbours on the street.
N1 seemed to have claimed the spot across the alley way as their parking right - many comical parking instances occur where they spend many minutes squeezing in, despite space in front of their house, and ignoring the fact that it reduces space in front of our house. They "reserve" the spot with traffic cones and accuse me of stealing them when they vanish one day (I had nothing to do with that).
Months pass - lots of DIY and wall paper removal - N1 complains fairly about noise at weekends, so we go into stealth DIY mode! N1 happy.
N2 builds an annexe at the back of their garden - looks nice - incurs the wrath of N1 as the alley has building materials in it on "their land". Disputes that they were informed of building work despite letters being delivered.
We have premature babies, one goes into intensive care with breathing issues. my wife spends 2 weeks in hospital. i spend the nights on the floor in the ward, and days finishing off the house. During this time, they block me in (car over alleyway, and their other cars parked over their drive, making very little space), making it impossible to get away in emergencies. After asking them not to, and they ignoring this, i parked 10cm over their drive, cue many nasty texts and visits shouting at me, which continued once the babies came home. Each visit by them was from a different child, fired up, who would then come around to the reasonableness of what we wanted (ability to park in front of our house and live in peace), but would get fired up again once they returned home.
N2 and us chat about us building an annexe and asked if we'd like to go halves on laying pipes in the alley to deal with waste and electricity.
N1 goes apoplectic at this and sends us letter from previous legal cycle over the same issue. My wife (while looking after two babies, one of which went back to hospital for another 5 nights) downloads title deeds from land registry which prove N1 and us have right of way over N2s land. N1 refuses this and claims "legal words can have so many meanings" - ie perfectly happy to ignore common sense.
They continue to block the alley and send us a solicitors letter that basically said "be nice to each other - failing that, call the citizens advice bureau" - we did, they told us to call the council, we did, they gave N1 a parking ticket. Then, off their own initiative, came back and gave them another the following week. N1 then decided to park on their own drive, and this has persisted as an uneasy truce (until this Christmas - they're now back over the alley and the whole mess has started again (texts, etc)).
We started the annexe build and ended up in the original posts situation. (The annexe is, frankly, awesome - I had a great time with our builder designing the heck out of it, and many wonderful hours wondering round building merchants!)
Fun times!
Alternatively, be a pleasant chap to prospective buyers and hopefully the house will sell and you never have to see your neighbour again.
As far as vengeance goes - if your neighbour ever puts his house on the market, spend £500 on a ratty old ice-cream van, and park it in your driveway.
It will probably knock £10,000 off the value of his house, and might even put people off at the first viewing.
If push comes to shove - tell him you'll sell him the van for £10k
Sounds like N1 needs some pu$$y......
If they block the alleyway - go to the police and raise the concern that emergency vehicles will not have access if they need to.
I did this with a commercial neighbour and played the long game with him.
He actually sold up and moved his premises.
How does N1 own the alley if it runs between you and N2? Where does the alley lead to? And what is the RoW over N2's land? Sorry, I'm confused.
Can you upload the LR plan, obviously with addresses blanked out?
We're having a similar RoW dispute with a fella who's bought the land next to us and is trying to build two homes on it and on the plans has significantly reduced our RoW, which is supposed to give us vehicle access to the rear of our property. His plans allow for a child's scooter. He's been knocked back by the Council once, then went straight to the State Department, who also knocked him back, and he's now submitted new plans to the council, which shave about 3ft off the top of the 2nd house, but no change to the 1st house. We're hoping he gets knocked back for this as well.
Get it skimmed when they're on holiday.
- - - Updated - - -
Get it skimmed when they're on holiday.
This ^
Slightly confused.
If you can post a GA it may help us give you a better opinion of options going forward.
Still pursue with RICS though!!
Whilst I am not Chartered I am a Surveyor. I feel that if the Surveyor is friends with the neighbour there could well be a conflict of interest and as such should be flagged up to the RICS as a misconduct. I hope you get the Pratt struck off his professional body. Good luck.
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Indeed - misconduct, collusion, misrepresentation, breach of professional ethics etc, etc...
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
^ this.
Fas est ab hoste doceri
Can't believe that noone suggsted the 'letterbox solution' yet
Sorry for your problems nightmare neighbours are a pain, you start to doubt yourself but there are people in the world that are just wrong in the head and you can not apply reason to them or what they do. Taking the complaint route is the right thing to do or you are just lying down and taking it.
I appreciate the worry about future sales if you start reporting behaviour, it just increases the worry but if you are there long term this is worth considering.
I had issues years ago where a neighbour continually parked, in an area to the rear of our houses where the garages were, and he kept blocking me in. Despite many polite requests, he moved the car at every request, he continually blocked me in. I had made it clear that parking there blocked me and to park somewhere else but he was always polite and moved his car........only to always park it there. One day I became most vexed when I had to get out and woke him up. In my vexed state I explained how I was going to deal with him....I was very forthright and physical in manner. He never parked there again.......well at least until the day after I moved!
Some people just need plain English because they are bottom feeder scumsucking sewer dwellers.
I do hope you problems get resolved, you have my sympathy.
You can't obstruct, alter, reduce, or extinguish a Right of Way. Plenty of case law on the matter. Planners are not interested in it as it has little or nothing to do with with an application (hard as that might seem).
Last edited by gerard; 10th January 2018 at 23:36.
The houses all have/had garages at the back, and the alley runs between my and N2s house. N1 is a mid-terrace house that can use the alley to drive to their garage (they never have, and their garage is also falling apart with a door that wont open) - pictures will make up for this explanation
......G----|--- G
..........G |........
N1....me |...N2
=====**==========road
[edit - drat - the format gets lost in publishing!]
(G=garage/annexe. | = alley way * = where N1 likes to park .... = spacers!)
N1 has no ownership of the alley - only right of way. They liked to claim ownership of it, but have now been shown that this is not the case, and that we will not put up with their behaviour or actions to assert ownership.
The Land Registry (LR) clearly shows N2 owns it in Blue, and myself and N1 have right of way over it in brown. The wording for N1 and me is exactly the same.
N1 in fact used N2's LR documents to initially try and "prove" it was their land. Pointing out the property on "their land registry document" was not actually their house didn't make any difference to their opinion.
Its been a nightmare - i'll post pics tomorrow - the CAB was useful and my wife used some web lawyer service that charged in 30 minute chunks. The advice was to document it, take photos and call the council. We plan to stay for a good while as its perfect for our jobs, family and mostly friendly people.
As a Chartered Surveyor I would agree with this. Report to RICS, you can also look them up on the RICS website.
Also is the other parties Surveyor a Quantity or Building or A Qualified Party Wall Surveyor, ETC, as he may be operating outwith his remit. I for one as a QS would never get involved with Party Wall disputes as it aint my bag.
Good luck
Been said many times before but check your home insurance as often there is a reasonable amount of legal cover with that.
Perhaps it is the way you have written it, or the way I read it - but I don't get this bit (the bold in your text):
There is nothing wrong in your neighbour's surveyor being friends with HIS client.
That is the reason you have a surveyor of your own, as you have NO RECOURSE with a surveyor instructed by your neighbour as that contract exists between your neighbour and HIS surveyor.
In a party wall dispute a third arbitration surveyor can be appointed, who will determine which of the initial surveyors is correct, I believe.
If this wasn't done, then I think you are best to put it down to experience and move on. If you want to save face (to him or to yourself) - look at ways of making life difficult for your neighbour in the future.
If you complain to RICS, your neighbour's surveyor (and prob your neighbour) will find out about that, and when RICS dismisses it - They will also learn of that, I suspect. (more loss of face - only pick the fights you can win)
HTH
A couple of observations;
It is always safest to make sure that you regularly exercise your right of way just to avoid any technical claim that it has been given up. In fact this is good practice for any property "right"
You need to check the precise wording of the right of way given to you and N1. It is not clear from the info whether he is actually parking on the area that you both have a right of way over but seems implied?
It's a technical area but it may well be expressed as a right to pass over the land (as opposed to being able to park on it) to grant access to a specific area. They generally just highlight the whole road and won't distinguish between areas that it is feasible to park on whilst allowing others to pass. Any deviation from this without consent from the owner (N2) could allow him to seek to injunct.
If N2 is the clear owner then it would generally be better if they had household legal cover and could ask their solicitor to enforce the covenant as they are the owner / grantor of the right. Your course of action would probably be technically against N2 to enforce the covenant as these things are generally drafted in a way that you receive a right generally in return for complying with conditions. It is unlikely that you will have a direct legal relationship with N1 in which case your legal path is to oblige N2 to enforce against N1. Likewise, I simply can't see the council getting involved if it is on private land
I know the RoW can't be reduced, altered or obstructed, and that planners don't take it into account.
His first plan included a parking space in front of the 2nd house which would have completely blocked the access. That has been removed in the new plans.
He is disputing the size of the RoW because in his deeds is a scrap of paper with an outline of the area (not to scale), including a shaded area that makes the RoW looks a lot smaller than the drawings in our deeds. They were both drawn up at different times – his about 3 years prior to ours in the 1950s.
We are sticking with the wording in our deeds which states we have full RoW access to the rear of our property, with or without vehicle. Luckily our neighbour has the same RoW so we're both fighting him.
Private rights-of-way are a very technical matter and something which regularly forms the subject of neighbour disputes.
Can I suggest that you go and see a solicitor with expertise in this area. Do some research and be prepared to travel to the right one. However well-intentioned comments are on this thread, your circumstances are unique (as are everyone else's) and therefore you need expert advice having regard to all of your circumstances.
If you think you need to litigate, consider things in a lot of detail before you even start off down that route. Litigation is hugely expensive and, even if you win, you are not guaranteed to get back all you have spent. You might however find that you have legal expenses cover on your house insurance. If you do, investigate whether you can use it here.
Before you go and see any solicitor, prepare a document setting out the circumstances that concern you - 2 or 3 sides of A4 maximum, plus photos / plans if helpful. Send this long first so that any face time or telephone conversations are properly informed. Your solicitor will (should) have to do quite a lot of digging into background documentation relating to your property and that of the neighbours, and it might be necessary to get a survey undertaken by a geomatic surveyor. The solicitor is also likely to get counsels opinion before setting out their advice. None of this comes cheap if properly done.
Your objective is to fully understand whether what is going on is infringing your rights – interference with the right-of-way is a nuisance whereas physical trespass is actually a different sort of basis for a claim.
If you do have a running argument with a neighbour, even if it doesn't lead to litigation, it can affect your ability to sell your house at some point in the future. Neighbour disputes need to be disclosed to prospective purchasers and – understandably – no one wants to inherit someone else's property dispute. Also bear in mind that while the dispute is going on, you still have to live next door to your counterpart.
I do understand how annoying these things are. My work has taught me how worthwhile it is to avoid neighbour disputes and yet I live next door to an ex-Premier league footballer who is operating at an international standard of being annoying. Regrettably, because he spends a lot of time worrying about being bothered by fans, he has no letterbox.
Good luck.
Last edited by Bristolian; 11th January 2018 at 22:44.
This looks similar to our situation. Land at the side and rear of us is garages.
N1 definitely cannot park across the RoW, or in any way obstruct the RoW so he is wrong to assume he can. He's a massive arse.
N2 could start legal proceedings to force the issue, but you could as well. You don't own the land, but you do have a RoW and are entitled to complete and unobstructed access to this at all times.
Unfortunately, none of this helps you with the annex skimming. It might be an idea to employ a third surveyor to assess the boundary and decide it once and for all. What I don't understand is, if you knew N1 was never going to let you access his property to finish the job, why didn't you mitigate for this at the planning stage? Or is it only a problem now N1's surveyor has decided the annex is on the boundary? In which case, the third surveyor is needed.
I can't see that N1 has any case at all but it's still hassle you could do without. Good luck
Thanks for all the continued advice - I'll digest it and discuss with my wife - completely agree that I don't want to lose even more face regarding a failed RICS claim.
"What I don't understand is, if you knew N1 was never going to let you access his property to finish the job, why didn't you mitigate for this at the planning stage? " We did sadly mitigate this by planning to build to the right side of the property - N1 claimed that they wouldn't be able to drive into their garage (never have or will etc) so we tried to be good and moved it against the other boundary.
heres a pic of the deeds - blue and brown extracted from the text and pasted below:
https://imgur.com/TdvVeWK
us and N1s: (relates to brown shading)
1 The Freehold land shown edged with red on the plan of theabove Title filed at the Registry and [...]
2 The land has the benefit of a right of way over the passage way tinted brown on the filed plan the expense of maintaining and repairing the same being borne in equal shares by the proprietor of the land in this title and the owner or owners of [us, N1, N2]
N2 (alley owner): (relating to blue shading)
- The Freehold land shown edged with red on the plan of the above Title filed at the Registry and being [N2].
- The passage way shown tinted blue on the filed plan is subject to rights of way the expense of maintaining and repairing the same being borne in equal shares by the proprietor of the land in this title and the owner or owners of [us, N1]
Last edited by poloman; 11th January 2018 at 21:43. Reason: Attempting picture
Helpful to have the wording. It is not limited by dimension, which means reasonable width of a vehicle. Stand your ground. I know a good barrister who specializes in RoW disputes if you need help. Best of luck with it.
I presume the actual wording is a bit more extensive than to merely say a right of way over?
I would expect it normally to provide both a purpose for the right of way (eg to access something specific) and be more prescriptive over how it may be exercised (eg for vehicles, by foot, etc)
The devil is in the detail in these things
Sadly not - the deeds date from the 1930s, so details are a little sparse.
The flank wall was skimmed after I begged and handed over cash, so the construction is complete. I offered to paint the wall as its a dull grey but they turned down the offer.
Onelasttime - good luck with your situation - amazing how much it gets under your skin, especially if you think fairness and common sense have a place in day to day life.
If he doesn't own the land buy a banger and park it there when he is out then just leave it there? won't need insurance as its privet land.
Will n2 agree to sell you the land for a nominal fee ? Would make easier to fight n1 over him parking there.
Last edited by golf; 12th January 2018 at 17:49.
I would report the surveyor to RICS, as you’ve said you are doing.
I’d then leave it, forget about it, and be the bigger man.
As cliche as it sounds, life is too short to allow stuff like this to bother you. Once your front door is shut, concentrate on enjoying your kids and time with your partner. Any time wasted thinking about your pathetic neighbour is him winning in a small way, and you losing.
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That sounds vaguely racist. You're not from Norfolk or something?
(Dials number)
“Hello, is that RICS. My neighbour engaged a surveyor, and it turned out they are friends - I demand action!”
”What? Did I engage the surveyor? Err - no, I have my own surveyor - he seems fine”
”CLICK”
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Isn't it the fact that the neighbour's surveyor gave one opinion prior to building, then changed this opinion (so as to screw the complainant) the basis of his complaint?
Some of the other responses appear to confuse contractual responsibilities to his client with professional and ethical ones to all parties and his profession.
Last edited by ernestrome; 14th January 2018 at 13:11.
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