Adge Cutler

The Conservation officer wont be concerned about rights of ownership though. All they will be concerned about is enfocing conservation area planning policy...I could obtain and get planning consent for an extension on your property if I wanted to..I don't have to be the legal owner.! If the neighbour follows the proper procedures and gets consent its most unlikely that they will be prevented from improving the property and reducing the Co2 footprint in doing so in line with the governments energy saving initiative. The PW surveyor will mediate a agreement for access and I suggest you try and minimise the encroachment by having the minimal amount and thickness of insulation on this gable, perhaps limit it to render only with a thermal board lining applied internally. I think it would be churlish to object to their proposals ultimately but the over-riding factor is that what they are doing is basically illegal. You sound as though you are not confident the boundary is in fact yours? Otherwise its black and white. Why not pop round and say you need a copy of the Conservation area consent for your solicitors just in case in the future there are any boundary issues when you come to sell your house. ? Don't be shrinking violet you and your property will be compromised if you a are. Crikey you have had three pages of free professional advice I would have charged £1500 quid for a year ago .!!

The true boundary though as you say has already been identified as the face of the gable wall on your deeds..QED. All the PW surveyor will do is rely on the same information obtained from HM Land Registry.

If the proper consent is in place then essentially no. The applicant would simply invoke the party wall act 1996 and appoint a surveyor to mediate and agree a right of access. It might delay the process but at least AL4X might get some new gates out of it or other consideration. Communication is the key here or lack of it.

You may find you wont be able to talk to the Planning Officer as they now charge for advice and any complaints are normally required in writing. You need to make written contact with Planning Control and Conservation. Assuming your in Hitchin and the regulatory authority is North Hertfordshire. the email address planning.control@north-herts.gov.uk If you want to maintain a cordial relationship with your neighbour go and see them ! If you are uncomfortable about this ...send the wife around.. I speak from over 35 years of professional experience dealing with cases like this where the root cause of acrimony was a lack of proper communication at the outset. Good luck and let us know how things progress.

I have a 14ins Stihl MS181..it has had regular use for the last 10 years or so. Coupled with a decent chain which is kept sharp. It has been faultless. I recall it was a tad under £250 when I bought it but now perhaps a bit more. Very easy to start, service and maintain. I don't spend money easily but this was an excellent investment.

I think Farage will quickly slip out of the political scene, perhaps be offered a board position for a major company.. I cant see him hitting the oration circuit for money..he's filthy rich as it is... a millionaire many times over. Which is I think the real reason he retired from the political spectrum before all his off shore accounts and investments were exposed. ( as is the norm with figure head politicians) I would imagine he will buy himself a little plane and flit between here, Germany and the Virgin Islands..perhaps even run a pub.

The legal boundary would be the face of the wall visible above ground. Eaves gutters and foundation projections are allowed to encroach into your property. The following link might reassure you. http://www.boundary-problems.co.uk/boundary-problems/walls.html At the very least they would need to seek permission to access the gable from your private property and and perhaps erect a narrow scaffolding. Fundamentally even though it may be permitted development they haven't got Conservation area consent and will be breaking the Law. You need to nip this in the bud and speak to the neighbour immediately. It may be that you might agree to it if the system isn't too intrusive into your property but bare in mind the final finish if garish and not aesthetically pleasing would have a serious detrimental effect on the value of your property. As I said before I would wager a penny to a pound the Insulation company are avoiding the proper procedures, perhaps through ignorance, but that is no excuse in the eyes of the law. Don't be timid....I wouldn't worry about upsetting them... they obviously have a low opinion of you as it is or they would have come around and seen you and explained what they were going to do and sought your blessing. This is quite a common problem I have experienced professionally many times and in most cases the conservation officer issued a cessation order until the application for conservation area consent was processed.

They will definitely require planning consent being in a conservation area. The granting of this and the final finish permitted will be depend on the conservation policy of your Local authority, or they may refuse it completely. The Insulation companies normally arrange the planning consent. Search the Planning Portal tomorrow and see if an application has been made or PM me your post code and LA details and I will access this for you..all information is in the public domain and the application will give details of the system to be used and possibly its thickness. Your parish council would have been informed also and the Planning office have a statutory obligation to write to you informing you that an application has been made which may effect the adjacent property. If you haven't received such then I suspect PP has not been obtained. Don't discount the fact that the Insulation company may be unscrupulous and haven't told your neighbours they need PP, once the work is done without PP and the money paid the Enforcement Officer might even condemn it. In respect of the Party Wall act 1996 this is a bit of a grey area where external insulation is concerned.. But if a Party wall surveyor is needed the applicant should meet the cost of this. How do you know the statutory boundary is this wall, If the houses were built at the same time this is most unusual. It would normally be the centre line ofthe passageway. The boundary would be above ground structures in this case also. You can easily check this with the land registry. To be blunt I would object to this if it were me and I would expect to see the proper procedure followed and be given some reassurance that the materials used did not form a fire hazard. There are other issues to consider also, if the passage is the only means of access to the rear of the property it could be construed as the only means of escape in the event of fire. You should discuss this candidly with your neighbour before taking it up with the planning authority..any objection will have to be formal in writing and posted in the public domain so your neighbours will know it was you in any event. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were to ask the neighbours "have you got Conservation area Consent ? the answer would be " the insulation company said we didn't need it ! " In which case you would probably be saving them thousands of pounds.

Don't do politics, causes to much friction...but whenever I hear his name mentioned I always start singing the Nellie the elephant song...off he went with a trumpety - trump, trump, trump, trump. Hilary isn't perfect but would appear to be the lesser of two evils in this case.. The American people will decide.

Its up to the French Authorities to sort this issue. Those immigrants desperate to get to Britain are being exploited by gun toting traffickers. I wouldn't be surprised if the French armed forces aren't soon drafted in to deal with this. The French don't normally deliberate in these cases. AS for travellers that's a separate topic.. But they should be afforded the same rights and abide by the same laws as everyone else. If the Authorities fail to uphold the laws of the land travellers shouldn't be victimised for it.

Credit to you...That's the right attitude to have and I must say most of the better builders I have encountered in my working life would say the same.

With respect if your builder is very experienced he should perhaps have identified this potential clash. ? I have over 30 years experience of this sort of thing it was in part, my profession as a expert witness in construction related issues. I have been employed by the SCC many times as a mediator and expert witness in similar cases. The court will expect you to have tried to reach an agreement with the other party before presenting your case, particularly in instances like this where the amount involved is not substantial. If you have not tried this route you will be penalised by the court. There are grey areas in this case on both sides and I am 100% confident the courts will pass this case on for mediation to an expert like me. All he will do is try and reach some common ground which is what should have happened in the first instance Unless you are 100% confident of an award of damages, for various reasons I don't have the time to go into now, I would advise you not to proceed. I would speak to your builder also before deciding on such action. The expert witness or mediator will want to know if he interpreted the drawings correctly because as I said before if it says check dimensions on site then that is precisely what you and him should have done....... its black and white.! I am afraid Take my advice, which is free Don't stew over it, take it on the chin try and reach an agreement and move on, and don't be vindictive, the error wasn't deliberate. I suppose the moral in this is don't cut corners with the design process and use a Architect who is registered and carries the appropriate professional indemnity, which you can fall back on. Don't make the mistake thousands make of assuming because building control have inspected and signed off the work there might not be a design defect through negligence or error in the years ahead. If there is and your architect /designer has no PI you are stumped.! Architects fees for design work should be a minimum of 3% of the build cost on small scale domestic work and Structural Engineers fees 1%. The majority of conflict in these type of cases is due to the house holder trying to pare essential expenditure from his construction budget. Remember talk is cheap proper advice is not !

People who litter disgust and annoy me.. Especially smokers who throw lighted cigarettes out of a car. I'm afraid litterers and fly tippers are generally the lower end of the evolutionary and intelligence chain so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by their actions.

The statement highlighted is normal and essentially means you shouldn't scale from the drawing or rely on the dimensions on it. You don't say if the drawings he has produced are dimensioned working drawings or just planning drawings. If you had paid a significant fee for the services of an accredited Architect who would carry some professional indemnity insurance and has produced a fully dimensioned construction drawing based on site measurements then you would have every right to be disgruntled and seek recourse. If you have however just employed this guy because he was cheap ( and I am not casting any aspersions on his ability or your integrity ) then you would have to bite the bullet and put it down to a genuine error on his part and an oversight on your and your subcontractors part too. Any good builder will produce a gauging rod and set up a profile on the existing building before starting work and adjust the brick coursing accordingly to compensate for any errors or site anomalies., especially in a instance like this where a window at high level could potentially foul the roof plane. I suspect your bricklayer has probably not even noticed this, just wanting I imagine, to get the bricks up quickly, get paid, make some money and move on. Subcontractors employed on a casual basis rarely look too diligently into these things. Where as Builder with total responsibility generally would. The fact that he has stated on the drawing that dimensions should be confirmed on site is I'm afraid a perfectly legal indemnity for him and in my experience of cases like this ( and they are very common) its highly unlikely the man in the wig will find in your favour. My best advice to you in a professional capacity ( but now retired) would be to try and work a compromise, but don't expect to get the total value of the alteration works back from him if indeed he has been employed on an informal basis because he was cheap. Good luck. Is the right answer... ( or someone like me )

Personally I only drink Greenhalls, ( That's when I am not drinking Scrumpy ) and don't laugh but a thin slice of beetroot sets it off quite nicely.

Hello.. 60 year Old from near Stroud in the heart of the Cotswolds. Lived here all my life Fished all of the rivers and shot on most of the estates in the County. Retired construction consultant and expert witness.