Boundary disputes
Are you experiencing a boundary dispute? Neighbours enroached upon your land? Received a letter from a lawyer ordering you to move your fence? Colaru Law Chambers have extensive experience in dealing with these matters in an efficient and effective way.
Please see below for a summary of what is involved in boundary disputes, but if you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.
What are the steps in this type of case?
1. Initial advice
What's involved?
We will analyse the documents you have, check maps, plans, title deeds, photographs and advise you as to what your chances and options are.
How long does it take?
We can usually arrange this within a week or so.
What will it cost?
It depends on the volume of paperwork involved but we can expectin most cases our fee to be £600 including VAT
2. Letter of Claim
What's involved?
We put forward a detailed analysis to the other side, explaining our view of the law and the evidence and giving them the opportunity to reach agreement with you, proceed to mediation, or alternatively provide their evidence and their side of the story.
If they refuse to engage then we can go straight to court, but in that case the opponent may be penalised by the court when it comes to the question of costs.
How long does it take?
It takes between one month and three months for this process depending on how the opponent reacts.
What will it cost?
This would usually cost in the region of £750 to £1,000 but it varies from case to case.
3. Mediation
What's involved?
Once the letter of claim process has run its course, if there is still not an agreement we would aim to go to mediation. A professional mediator will shuffle between the different parties and try to break down the differences and see if an agreement can be reached.
How long does it take?
It takes around 3 weeks to find a mediator and agree a date and time with the opponent. This does require the opponent to agree to mediation and so if they do not co-operate we would have to go straight to the next step, which is court action. However in boundary dispute cases mediation is always preferred as reaching better outcomes.
What will it cost?
This depends on the mediator and the nature of the dispute but can be in the region of £2,000 to £5,000
4. Court proceedings
What's involved?
We would issue a claim through the Business and Property Courts. The process starts with a Claim Form setting out the nature of the claim, and a document called Particulars of Claim setting out the facts we rely on. Within about six weeks the opponent will have filed their Defence to the claim and we can file a Reply in return. The next step is what is called Allocation. This is where the judge decides how long the process should take for the case to get to a trial in the court. This may involve a court hearing or may be dealt with by both sides sending in their proposals to the judge to consider on paper.
After that, each side has to prepare for court which normally means finding documents, requesting documents from the other side, getting experts such as surveyors, finding witnesses, preparing statements ready for court and preparing the bundles for court.
Finally - assuming the case has not settled before - the matter will then go to a trial at court where a judge hears each side's witnesses any expert reports and the documents and makes a final decision.
How long does it take?
It takes around 12 months for a case to get to trail from the court case being started, but some cases can take longer and sometimes can be done a bit more quickly.
What will it cost?
It is difficult to predict the cost and it depends on the steps that the court asks each party to deal with.Unless the case is extra complex, the amount of costs are fixed by a formula set down by the court rules and this ranged from around £5,000 to £10,000 for the most simplest of cases up to around £50,000 for more complex cases. The most complex cases do not have fixed costs, but instead a judge decides early on how much in costs each side should incur.
The winning party can usually expect to recover the legal costs they spend from the losing party, but that does not always apply.
What to do now?
If you'd like to discuss the services we offer, and how we can help, please contact us. There's no charge for making an enquiry and the quicker you contact us, the quicker we may be able to help!
An indication of the steps involved, and the fees that we would charge if you were our client is set out on this page above. Please note that the charges listed are intended to cover the most common types of case that we see. If you came to us with an out of the ordinary case, it could be that we would not be able to act for your for the fees set out above. However, we would discuss this with you first, and you would have the opportunity to decide whether you wished to go ahead or not. Fees set out above are not fixed price quotes. They include VAT but any fees that are charges by third parties (such as the court) are subject to change, and the amount you need to pay is the whatever they charge when you instruct us to proceed.
In some cases and in some situations a court may order you to pay costs to the "other side" in a case. Usually (but not always) this happens if you "lose" your case and the other side "wins", or sometimes if a settlement offer is made it can happen if you don't take the settlement but a judge later thinks you should have done. These costs would be broadly similar to the costs you incur, but are often higher as our costs tend to be lower as we work more efficiently for you and aim to keep our costs low. They are not included in the breakdowns above.
Whilst we're happy to talk through what we can do to help, we won't be able to give legal advice until you formally become our client and you have signed the Client Care Pack we will send to you.
We can offer help in a number of different way, whether that's from just providing you with written advice, helping with one step or stage of your case, or handling the whole case for you from start to finish. We will help in whatever way best suits you!