Has anyone done this?
My garden is fairly small 7.5m wide x 4m deep – this is the grassed area of my garden which is the furthest away part from the house.
I do have a small patio outdoor space too

There is a strip of woodland behind my house (and neighbouring houses) that is part of the local school grounds.

To my knowledge the school don’t currently use it for anything and it is largely overgrown with a few mature trees in it and quite a few presumably self seeded smaller trees (there are to Tree preservation orders on the trees)

I would like to investigate the possibility of buying some of the land to extend my garden allowing me to erect a man shed/workshop for hobby use.

I am thinking 4m extension and full width would be big enough which would allow me to put a 4mx4m workshop shed.

When we first moved in one of the mature trees was overhanging our garden so I enquired with the school about getting it cut back (at my expense) and the tree surgeon who came to look at the job told me he was already booked in to do the whole line of trees at the schools expense, so they are responsible for spending out to maintain it.

The school is a secondary school and not privately owned, should I approach the school with a view to my proposal or approach the council?

Has anyone had any dealings with councils in buying extra garden land? if so can you fill me in on your experience? Cost of land, cost of legal fees etc

Google map view of proposed purchase area outlined in yellow

[/url]garden extension plan by Colin MacColl, on Flickr[/img]

[/url]garden plan by Colin MacColl, on Flickr[/img]

Many thanks
Col

Copy letter to school and council / LEA. I’ll bet they say no as a sale will not make a significant amount. It will create a wriggle in the boundary which has potential( possibly not real) for more fiddly boundary maintainence.
Good luck but don’t hold your breath.
NB school status may make a difference as it may affect who holds the purse strings, but ultimately I bet the landowner has the final say.

Is the area ever accessed by anyone? Fenced off?. If so, I’d be tempted to guerilla plant it for a couple of years, see if anyone bothers, like garden squatting. There must be some daft law stating that it’s yours after 3 years or something….

Lots of folk have done this along the local railway line, extended their garden by another few metres onto scotrails land…..

As above its a lot of hassle for them for little return. You may have more luck making a bigger deal. Would other neighbours be interested? If everybody wanted a slice you could propose buying a bigger strip and dividing it between you.

Third option is to squat it and go for adverse possession. You need to build the fence without them noticing for 10 (I think) years. Highly unlikely to work unless it’s very dense woodland though. 😉

If it’s still a council owned school contact the surveyor(s) at the council (county council if you are 2 teir). They handle buying selling and management of land and property. The head will have a say and will behave like it’s theirs but it’s not. But there’s a slim to none chance that it will be available for what you will view as s reasonable sum.

We’ve just done it but bought the land from a neighbour. They sold off some land about 15 years ago to the side of their house to a developer who built our house but they kept a large bit which wrapped around the back of the garden for the new build. So their garden was like an upside down L running alongside and then around the back of ours. We moved in almost 3 years ago and always fancied having the bit behind to extend our garden which also has some nice mature trees. Last year we approached them as we never really saw them use it and they’re getting on so suspected they might see it a hassle to maintain. They agreed to sell it. I offered a low ball opening offer expecting to get bartered up but they took it! We agreed to pay their costs and for the fencing. All in combined legal fees were about £1200 and the same again to fence it. We’re delighted. The kids will love it in the summer.

I would certainly look into it but agree though with the above that it’s likely to be trickier with the school. You have to make it as little hassle for them as possible and worth their while if you’ve got any chance.

there are to Tree preservation orders on the trees

I assume that’s “no”, i speak from bitter current experience that will take the council all of about 4 minutes to rectify but they won’t bother until the tree is under threat.

I’d be surprised if the council allowed the purchase of a little notch of land like that as it would devalue any possible future development and also not be worth their effort to sell to you in the first place – but like everything it’s always worth asking