Line of junction advice

[Strak]

Hello everyone, I wonder if I could pick the group's brains regarding line of junction notices.

 

I'm struggling a little to get hold of my neighbour who rents out their property in order to discuss and sign party wall consent, and the same for line of junction. I'm in the process of writing an email summarising all they need to know about the two documents. I have it handled for the party wall stuff, but there's something I'm unsure of with the line of junction that I want to double check.

 

We're in a semi detached property, and we're adding a ground floor rear extension which has a wall against the neighbours garden. In the image below from the structural engineer, the wall on the left of the picture butts up against the garden.

 

What it looks like now (ours is the house in the middle with the glass conservatory):

(by the way, for those of you following my thread about asbestos removal which turned out not to contain asbestos - it was for the garage you see in this drawing, and it has now gone!)

 

Future:

As you can see this carries on the line where our conservatory is now - foundations will need to be replaced obviously, but this is just carrying on an existing line).

 

Engineers drawings:

 

And now, a summary of the things I'm getting myself confused about ....

• When I read the .gov.uk website, it seems that for a new wall wholly on my land I just need to notify and that's it.
• As you can see in the engineering drawings, the foundation is wider than the wall (unless I'm reading them incorrectly?), meaning that if I built a wall right up to the boundary but not over it, the foundation would need to go under it - is that still building the wall wholly on my land because the visible wall is on my land?
• I asked our architect about this and he was of the opinion that consent would not be necessary as we're not building over the boundary, but as you can see in the drawings the fence has been removed, which is maintained by that neighbour, and I don't think we can reasonably take out a fence without any form of consent.
• If I build right up to the edge of my land but not over it, is it a silly thought to try to leave the fence in place butted right against the wall to avoid complications with the neighbour? (maybe agreeing with the tenants to remove the fence panels to build up the wall, then put them back in)
• The option requiring consent is to build a wall astride the boundary - similar to the questions above, and to simplify it a bit, is that essentially similar to replacing the middle of my new wall replacing their fence
• I've also read a few things online about building 50mm from the boundary, but not on any official site - is that just a red herring, or is there some basis to it?

 

Because communication has been difficult (not angry or rude, just very hard to get hold of) with the neighbour until now, I want to be as clear as I can on my options and hopefully find a nice simple way forward. My ideal position would be something like - "we're building right up to the fence as per the planning permission, and if you would like us to remove it so you don't have to maintain that section anymore, we will do that".

 

Any friendly thoughts appreciated!!

[Conor]

Just pull everything back 250mm and make life easier for yourself.

 

Do you have planning approval yet?

[Super_Paulie]

like what Conor says, i left the fence and built it with a 250mm gap to my brickwork. Worked out well as i able to run a waste down there as well.

Have these plans been passed? it looks like its massively different to the neighboring houses and a bit of a monstrosity to be perfectly honest. I wouldnt be happy if i was either neighbor.

[JohnMo]

Always baffles me why people add so much space to an existing property, move.

 

Issues I see

Foundation go over property line. Can that happen, it's not your land!

You need to dig up next doors land, think you will be asked to pay for the privilege or told no.

You need access to nextdoor to finish wall.

You need roof access to your neighbours property to get everything water tight where your new flat roof joints their lean too extension.

[Mr Punter]

The section drawing is not very helpful as it shows the other side of the extension, where you have a path.  You really need details showing the opposite side.

[Strak]

2 minutes ago, Mr Punter said:

The section drawing is not very helpful as it shows the other side of the extension, where you have a path.  You really need details showing the opposite side.

Oops, good spot, thanks - screenshotted the wrong bit. I'll update that later, although wall and foundation structure are the same.

[Strak]

1 hour ago, JohnMo said:

Always baffles me why people add so much space to an existing property, move.

 

Issues I see

Foundation go over property line. Can that happen, it's not your land!

You need to dig up next doors land, think you will be asked to pay for the privilege or told no.

You need access to nextdoor to finish wall.

You need roof access to your neighbours property to get everything water tight where your new flat roof joints their lean too extension.

It's a fair point and yes we would move if we could, but in the area I'm in bigger properties are prohibitively expensive, as we know from having recently missed out on purchasing something else which is why we're continuing down this route as a phased build.

[Strak]

@Conor @Super_Paulie yes plans are passed. It's actually a fairly typical size extension for the area, just happens that the two houses either side haven't done it. We actually consciously downsized some parts of it as we felt many extensions in the area were too bulky. We even built a little mockup out of lolly sticks and card to check that it didn't look crazy big and it looked pretty nice (in my opinion!).

 

The screenshots I sent make it look bulkier than it is because of the perspective - there's an angled wall that's quite hard to see in this one but it was the best picture to show the wall I'm talking about.

 

Anyway, each to their own and thanks for the 250mm tip 🙂