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How does a Boundary Dispute occur?
When you purchase a freehold property, you don’t just buy the structure; you also buy the land itself. Generally, that means anything within the limits of your property lines is for your use and enjoyment.
Disagreements about property lines can arise over almost anything—walls, extensions, parking bays, garages, painted lines, trees, or lawns. At these times, boundary surveys become important. A surveyor with a legal mandate comes to a site to ascertain where ownership begins and ends.
What is a Boundary Surveyor?
In Canterbury, a city that seamlessly blends the contemporary with the centuries-old, the accurate determination of property lines is both crucial and complicated.
Boundary surveys in Canterbury and the surrounding area require not only a knowledge of the basic principles and practice of surveying but also a familiarity with the local land use regulations and an understanding of the peculiarities of nearly hundreds of years of Canterbury’s property history.
A boundary survey can give you confidence that your property lines are accurate, whether you’re using it to help you subdivide a parcel of land, settle a disagreement with your neighbour access, or prove to your local council that the property you want to build won’t infringe on your neighbour’s rights.
What is a boundary survey report?
Boundary surveys are not done primarily for the benefit of one property owner. They are done to settle disputes and find out where the fence either begins or ends. They involve a set of best practices that determine the facts and find out the truth of the matter. You begin with a review of original materials like historical land registries and mapping from ordnance surveys. Then, a chartered surveyor comes to the site to draw up a report and give a professional opinion.
Locating the Legal Boundary
The survey itself can not absolutely prove where the property line is, but it does make a well-informed indication, which serves as a starting point for anyone looking to enforce their property’s boundary.
The survey suggests a number of different possible next steps. With that in mind, there are a several reasons why a boundary survey might be recommended, such as the extent of the building works you are looking to undertake.
Knowing where your property ends and begins is critical, especially if you’re making significant changes to it. Obtaining a boundary survey is the most reliable way to ensure you have that knowledge.
The Process of Boundary Surveying
To begin your boundary survey, provide your surveyor with information about any current boundary disputes, property deeds, and any historical details pertinent to the boundaries or property lines. The surveyor will visit your site and, using topographical instruments and photography, make a site plan. This plan will show the agreed-upon view of the property boundary as it exists now, overlaid on what they believe to be the property line.
Is a Surveyor able to Identify a Legal Boundary?
The surveyor can only make assumptions and draw inferences from the available on-site evidence in developing a property boundary plan. In other words, this means their decision is based on their knowledge and experience, not a permanent rule.
When you provide details to your surveyor, they will add more data to their report and your result is likely to be more accurate.
Who Pays for a Boundary Survey?
When it comes to owning land and having legal boundaries that denote ownership, the expense of establishing those boundaries typically falls to you—unless, of course, you’ve made an agreement with your neighbour to share the cost.
If you’ve recently purchased a home and have any uncertainty about your property lines, it might be worth it to pay for a land surveyor to come out and do the work. They will tell you where your line is in law, which can have serious ramifications. Indeed, it’s better to know where you stand now than to find it out later when the next buyer wants proof of what’s physically yours and what’s not.
Expense in Hiring a Boundary Surveyor
The boundary survey costs depend on how complex your particular situation is and what time of year you’re asking for the survey to be done. Our panel of boundary surveyors are interested to know not only the current dispute or situation but also any future plans you might have that could affect the boundary line. When they do the actual research needed to resolve the problem, they will check a variety of basic survey mapping tools and old title plans from the land registry to make sure the answer is as close to “right” as possible. When you consider the cost of doing all this and add in the actual survey cost itself, you’re probably looking at a figure around £1,000 on average.
How long does a boundary survey remain last for?
Although it doesn’t carry an expiry date, a boundary survey should be updated regularly—especially in times of rampant landscape alteration and real estate development. Even ownership changes can necessitate an update. A boundary survey may be amended to reflect any such changes if they affect the boundary in question.
Once you’ve had a boundary survey done, it’s imperative that the information used in the survey becomes part of the Land Registry system for it to be used in the future.
Even though a boundary survey never expires, it should be updated whenever ownership changes, the surroundings shift or there is a lot of local development.
When the survey is complete, ensure the Land Registry’s title plan is updated to have the new information on file.
What are the Protocols of Boundary Disputes?
Sometimes, your neighbour may not understand that a physical boundary is also a legal boundary, and they may think that they have been granted an easement over an adjacent part of your property when, in actuality, they have not.
As a result, these kinds of issues need a methodical way of being resolved. Something called the Boundary Disputes Protocol provides this organised framework, taking as its mission to contain the problem and resolve it in a way that doesn’t involve legal trial.
The spirit of the protocol is that the parties in a dispute over a boundary should do everything they can – and preferably right at the outset of the dispute – to clear up their problem in a way that makes sense to all concerned and without recourse to a judge.
Mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution are said to have numerous advantages when it comes to litigating boundary disputes.
What do Chartered Surveyors do when resolving disputes with neighbours?
The expertise of Chartered Surveyors is really invaluable when it comes to resolving boundary disputes.
Chartered Surveyors have the skill set necessary to determine where a boundary should be placed, using a wealth of information obtained from not only inspecting the site, but also from studying the historical data and legal documents associated with that site.
Increasingly, these experts are using a combination of professional judgment and modern technology to arrive at the boundary line. When they do arrive at a solution, it’s more common than not for these professionals to issue a boundary agreement. This agreement will facilitate a path to a quick resolution and an amicable neighbourhood.
Is it advisable to sue for a boundary dispute?
Property lawsuits – boundary disputes included – are a major undertaking that takes time, energy, and usually lots of money to resolve, with no guarantee of success. They often involve complicated legal and factual issues and can pit neighbours against each other in ways that are not easily mended.
If the informal approach does not work: if you do end up having to resolve your dispute through the courts, you can also expect your relationship with your neighbour to be irreparably damaged.
Failure of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR): when attempts at resolving a dispute with the help of professionals through mediation, negotiation, or expert determination have failed to yield an agreement, litigation may be required to settle the dispute. You can take a dispute to court when you have clear legal grounds to do so—as per professional advice. If you have been attempting to settle a dispute and find that it is not going to settle without going to court, then legal proceedings are the next logical step.
Adverse Possession Claims: squatters’ rights are another name for adverse possession claims and give people the chance to get ownership of land they occupy without consent from the official owner. To prove adverse possession, the person claiming it must display factual possession, prove their intention to claim the land, and demonstrate a conflict against what the true owner wanted.
Complying with the Protocol: checking for compliance with the established protocol is step one. This means ensuring that the disputing parties have followed the appropriate boundary dispute protocol steps up to and including attempts to resolve the boundary dispute through something called alternative dispute resolution (ADR). These steps include, but are not limited to: exchanges of necessary and adequate information, making sure there have been attempts to resolve the dispute using reasonable means, and ensuring litigation is the last resort.
Obtain Comprehensive Legal Counsel: prior to making the significant decision to go to court, it is important to have the right legal counsel in your corner. A solicitor who knows and understands property disputes can provide counsel to give you better odds when you are setting up the preliminary action for a potential court case.
Determining the Boundary Line
- Legal Papers: the very first step is to go over the legal papers that might apply to your property. These consist of title documents and records at the local land registry. The documents may include boundary line descriptions, plans, or references that were created at the time of the original conveyance or any time later.
- First Conveyance: the next step is to check the first conveyance. This is often necessary in order to resolve a boundary dispute. Most boundary disputes require getting back to the first conveyance which divided your land and your neighbour’s. This document should locate the boundary. How the first conveyance is interpreted often decides the dispute. It may be decisive because subsequent actions or conveyances may also play a part in some cases.
- Historical Review: when historians study historical documents, maps, and aerial photographs, they can discover the original boundaries of the landscapes they study and see how those boundaries changed over time. By analysing these materials, historians also can determine what downright factors led to the establishment of those early boundaries and what those boundaries might indicate about human behaviour in the past.
- Site Inspection: this involves a physical examination of the area in question. It allows not only studying of any modern interpretations of boundaries but also to recognise past boundary-making endeavours—these might appear like enclosures, windscreens, or other dubious landmarks. From the standpoint of physical science, these implications might offer an operational analysis of the limits. However, people have been known to erect convincing boundary markers that aren’t always reliable.
- Chartered Surveyor: ensuring the services of a chartered surveyor when establishing an accurate boundary line is of utmost importance. Surveyors possess the legal and technical knowledge required to really know not just where a boundary is but also why it is where it is. They interpret legal property documents. They understand—and are able to address—plans and other sorts of detailed drawings that don’t quite relate to typical everyday experiences.
