There is a small strip of land at the back of my house that is inbetween my fence and a wall for the car park to an old folks home. The strip of land is about 5 or 6 ft wide and runs to the edge of my land where there is a wall from another house (so it is effectively a dead end strip 6ft x 20ft approx).

The land is just full of brambles at the moment. I have always assummed that it belongs to the old folks home. I got a copy of my boundaries from the land registery but it is unclear whether the boundary is the wall or my fence.

I contacted the home’s managment company to see if they wanted to sell it and after much badgering (about 12 months worth) they said they no. I wonder if that was just to shut me up.

Quite a few people have said just take it over. I put (propped) an old piece of fence up about two years ago and it has never been moved and no-one has ever said anything.

Anyone been in a similar situation?

12 years, legally, is how long you need to wait once you’ve fenced it off IIRC.

You might also need to do a land search, it might belong to a utility company with pipes and shit running under it.

Literally!

It’s not a ransom strip then: something the developer keeps back in case they can sell it later at a premium for access?

It’s not a ransom strip then: something the developer keeps back in case they can sell it later at a premium for access?

No, it really is an odd piece of land. My neighbour once said that there were trees running down the backs of all of the houses and part of the planning for the old people’s home was that they left the trees there. There are no trees in the strip but I can only assume that perhaps there used to be. I have lived there for about 10 years and there were no trees when we moved there.

If you can imagine looking down an alley with a dead end, that would be it! It has a wall to the right (car park) wall in front (someone else’s garden) and my fence to the left!!

Clear it and start keeping it tidy – as if you own it – then see if anyone says anything. If no-one does then go back to the land registry as I think they are the ones that know absolutely where boundaries lie.

OR

Take your fence down and move it to the wall (and clear it etc). You’ll soon find out if someone owns it. If no-one comes along then keep quiet for 12 years!

My parents have something similar, their road is built in the back gardens of the original houses in the area, they had massive long gardens a devoloper bought one house in one road (A), one house in road (B)& the ends of all the gardens & made 2 brand new roads,1 entered from existing road A, the other from existing road B. The narrow strip is a leftover from one of the original houses, it had a right of way covenant or something once, but all longe since blocked of to the public, however the passage had to stay in theory at least… So the guy has a 300ft garden but its only 4ft wide for 250ft of it.

As above – Land Registry will come along and sort out definitive boundaries at a cost.

We’ve got a thing a bit like that – a gate at the back of our garden opens onto a passageway that runs along the back of a bunch of other gardens. We’ve got the only access, so is it ours?

Land registry search. It’s only 4 quid and can be done online.

Not in Scotland, it seems…

We’ve got the only access, so is it ours?

I doubt there’s anything stopping the neighbours adding an access from the bottom of their gardens, so probably not.

Oh? Fair enough. Normally when things are different in Scotland it’s normally for the better except for life expectancy. Is there

Different rules on adverse possession apply to registered and unregistered land. If it does belong to the care home then you will have acknowledged that they are the owners by asking them to sell it to you and shot your self in the foot in terms of making a claim for a.p.

Have you tried building houses on it and moving your citizens in ? It worked on the West Bank in Israel.

we have exactly the same the bottom of our garden.. the house behind us whose garden is the otherside of the land allowed his fence to fall down and then started gardening on the land.. our next door nieghbour .. a judge immediately fired off a note to all properties with boundaries on the land and the land registry claiming the land as hers..

apprently this trumps the 12 years stuff as some one else ( her) also claims it as thiers.. its mine no its mine so land regustry say its nobodies …

Unfortunately you are unlikely to be able to use the law of adverse posession (the 12 yr thing) becuase you possibly have,to a sufficient extent [IANAL] recognised the “ownership” of the land by the care home, by offering to “buy it” off them.

To claim adverse possession (and Im bound to be wrong in parts here as it’s been over 15 years since my degree course) you need to do a few things such as:
Exclude others from the land (i.e. take “possession” of it, maybe with a gate or fence)
Make use of the land
Not “recognise” another party’s ownership of the land.

etc.

There’s probably a wiki on it.

If I were you, Id clear the land and use it, but do so with a clear distinction as to it’s boundaries so that a) if it’s taken back, it’s clear what’s what and b) if you sell the house it’s easy to explain and demonstrate the extent of your property title and how that bit is outside of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession

Adverse possession requires at a minimum five basic conditions being met to perfect the title of the disseisor. These are:

Actual possession of the property
Non-permissive, hostile or adverse use of the property
Open and notorious use of the property
Continuous use of the property
Exclusive use of the property

Land registry search. It’s only 4 quid and can be done online.

How precise is that? We have about 2ft between our fence and the wall which formed the original boundary of the site which was developed. The land is either ours or still belongs to Bovis as a ransom strip – which seems possible given the details of the ongoing planning application for the land behind. I have fired off the first stage of claiming ownership though, by pointing out in my objection to the application that they couldn’t just lower the wall because I own the land up to it (I have our deeds but they’re certainly not precise enough to tell, I thought nothing to lose by claiming I owned the land), to which their response was to back down and remove the plan to lower the wall. Neighbours both sides have already removed fences and claimed the land.

It is not very precise. Small scale drawing with boundary marked on it.

Thanks for all of the answers above.