Stan The Man wrote:

Part of my garden originally belonged to the neighbouring farmer; the
previous owner of my property bought half a field from him 15 years ago
and has since integrated it into the original garden here - laying
turf, planting shrubs, creating borders, laying a brick patio, putting
up a couple of garden sheds, etc. However, she never applied to the
local authority to change the use of the acquired land from
agricultural to garden use. I'm led to believe that it should be
straighforward for me to make an application now for garden use based
on lawful development over more than 10 years. But I am curious to know
why I need to do it. What can't I do on agricultural land that I can do
on garden land - and vice versa? TIA.

Simon

We encountered a simiar situation 4 years ago when we bought our present
property.

The owner's mother, recently deceased, had owned a strip of land about
45 ft wide and 250 ft long. 'Originally' (i.e. 1930s and earlier, this
had been orchards. At some stage, before the 1960s (possibly earlier), a
number of agricultural building had been erected - including a hen house
and pig sty. The building were principly used for storage of
agricultural machinery.

During the 1970s, at the N end, a detached house was built and at the S
end, a bungalow was built. The owners mother occupied the bungalow and
the owner and his family occupied the house.

When we were purchasing the house, I made the observation to our
solicitor that it looked as though the 'garden' had never been a true
garden. Had planning permission been obtained?

If it had, nobody could prove it. There was evidence that planning
consent had been given for the house but this only included ~15 ft of
land to the rear of the house. During the intervening years, there had
been further development, so there was housing on all sides.

The District Council were worse than useless - on the 'phone, their
attitude was "... we can't see what all the fuss is about, it's
obviously a garden." Would they put that in writing? Absolutely not!

The real problem was that our lender would not proceed until the whole
problem was resolved. I even suggested that we split the purchase - the
lender advance us the money to buy the house, over which there was no
dispute, and we would pay cash for the land to the rear, and sort out
the useage later. The lender refused (the Halifax, as it happens).

We almost walked away but the combination of large rear garden and price
was exactly what we wanted and could afford.

The seller almost walked away until I carefully pointed out that it was
a problem that they would have to deal with sooner or later, before
selling, since any future purchaser would most likely also be relying on
a mortgage and their lender would certainly make similar objections.

The owner went through the process of getting a Certificate of Lawful
Use. No real problem, since the neighbours didn't want anybody keeping
pigs or hens on the land! However, this process took over 6 months!

Once the certificate was finally issued, the lender was prepared to
proceed. Something that did come out in all this was that our solicitor
was not only acting for us but was also acting for the lender, creating
a clear conflict of interest. Apparently, this is standard practise. I
would, however, strongly advise anybody buying a house to insist that
their solicitor/conveyancer act solely for them - if we had done this,
the whole problem might not have arisen.

As a final spanner in the works, ~2 weeks before completion, I had a
meeting with our solicitor and, going through the paperwork, noticed
that the rear boundary to the garden was in the wrong place! Prior to
selling the house, the owner had sold the bungalow. While his mother had
been alive, they had never had a fence between the properties - when he
sold, he'd just asked the purchaser where he wanted the fence and put it
up. Subsequently, he then proceeded to try to sell to us most of the
garden of the bungalow owner - who was not very please about it!

It seems that the owner had never bother to tell his solicotor about the
fence. To resolve this, the Land Registry had to come out and resurvey
the boundaries - another 6 weeks!

--
Larry Stoter