Rights of way are rather complex things as we are finding out. The driveway to Brookvale had access rights granted to the owners of the existing 5 cottages when they were sold off in 1992. Trouble is that the person that granted those rights didn't actually own the land over which the driveway runs. Instead it is claimed that the land belongs to a farmer at a nearby farm. So, in theory, the owners of the 5 cottages have no legal access rights anyway!
However, the driveway land isn't registered so its impossible to find out for sure if he does own. Another fact compounding matters is that someone else is trying to get access rights to the field beyond our plot, with the hope that they might develop that area for housing. That person seems to have some influence over the farmer who reputedly owns the land, so we have a conflict of interests - we want declared access rights, but the developer-to-be wants some of our land to enable an 8 metre wide road to be created (minimum size that the council will allow for a development). Obviously, we don't want any houses built in the field, although the local development plan stipulates that nothing will be developed there until at least 2060, so there's not much chance anyway. However, at present the developer-to-be is suggesting that he will stop us using the drive, even though he is not the owner of the land. Nice man!
After much research we believe that the driveway land and the field beyond may have been sold to the farmer without much in the way of legal involvement, and even if there are title deeds it is unlikely that they would be very specific about access to the general area of Brookvale, so giving us the ability to access our plot by default. Legal precedents seem to suggest that a court would uphold our right of access if it did go legal anyway, so feeling less concerned thatn a couple of days ago.
Our plan B is that we have purchased a strip of land that runs from the road to our plot and parallel to the existing drive such that as a last resort we can put in a new access drive to 6 Brookvale.
Trainee land registry expert from Clifton
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