Whether your fence has been knocked down by strong winds, or is suffering from rot on one side, it can be difficult to know who actually owns the fence.
The old myth is that “each homeowner is responsible for maintaining the fence on the left-hand side, as you look at the property from the road”. This is simply not true, according to Nadine Stevenson at Gough Solicitors. There are no hard and fast rules about whether you own the fence on the left or the right of your property.
The first place to check to see which boundaries you own and are responsible for maintaining is your title deeds. When the original landowner subdivides the land into smaller plots, the owner or seller assigns responsibility for the boundaries of each of the smaller plots they create during the sale of each plot. This responsibility is then recorded in the title deeds, in a Conveyance or Transfer.
The Conveyance or Transfer will specify that the buyers (and possibly their successors in title – the subsequent buyers) are responsible for all of the boundaries on a joint and equal basis with their neighbouring property/properties; or that they are responsible only for the boundaries marked with “T” symbols pointing inward along the boundary lines on the Plan included with the Conveyance or Transfer documents.
Ownership of a boundary structure doesn’t guarantee its upkeep by the responsible party. Practically speaking, these requirements become challenging to uphold once the initial buyer named in the Conveyance or Transfer moves elsewhere.
In many situations, the title documents remain unclear and do not specify boundary responsibilities. Under these circumstances, you might need to rely on details provided by the Seller through the Seller’s Property Information Form when you bought the property, or examine historical ownership patterns and neighbouring arrangements.
Occasionally, discrepancies arise between the Seller’s Property Information Form and the official title documents. This occurs because residents erect new fencing, establish hedgerows and construct walls, naturally assuming ownership of their improvements.
Title deed records are very rarely updated to reflect these changes. Naturally, the Seller’s perspective on boundaries might clash with their neighbours’ views. It can be difficult to push a neighbour to repair their fence as no legislation requires fence owners to undertake repairs.
Even if the fence collapses entirely, there is no legal requirement to maintain boundary fencing whatsoever. Your sole recourse when a neighbour refuses fence repairs is that as long as it’s within your boundary, you’re free to put up a fence on your property, regardless of whether it touches your neighbour’s fence.
A fence typically has a ‘good’ side (the smooth side without posts) and a ‘bad’ side (the side with extra posts). The decision of which way the fence faces is entirely at the discretion of the fence owner. So if that isn’t you, they might end up with the nicer view. However, this doesn’t prevent you from planting large shrubs or finding other ways to conceal it.