Shed

I'm afraid to say that you're right. One of my neighbours keeps harping on about a 45 year old restrictive covenant on the properties banning workshops. Even though the planning people insist that it referred to commercial ones. He reckons that a couple of lathes, milling machine, shaper and surface grinder must constitute "Industrial use". Even if you tried, you couldn't make enough profit to starve on with the kit in question.

He's going to get really pissed of in a few years time when I get the cupola furnace built :-)

Mark Rand RTFM

Why does he care? Are you making a noise? Emitting smells? Also, I understand that restrictive covenants are the responsibility of the party who put them in place (generally the builder or owner of the land before the builder moved it). After 45 years, do you think you could find them?

Brian

That is indeed the case, there is no legal way your neighbour can enforce a covenant in your deeds directly with you as he doesn't have a contract with you, they have to go through who ever split the land up and imposed the covenant. When you consider that most smaller builders routinely create a limited company for a build and then wind it up afterwards to allow them to walk away from any responsibility, there is little chance of them being enforceable unless it's built by a big name.

However, rights of way are NOT the same, they persist regardless and can normally only be withdrawn by mutual consent of all parties currently involved in them, getting one cancelled without such consent is virtually impossible even if they haven't be exercised in decades

Greg

Yeah I _was_ making a noise _and_ emitting smells. You remember July "the warmest month in the UK since records began"? I had a box fan running in the front doorway of the shed on a couple of evenings to help dehumidify the shed after the neighbour emptied a 300 gallon paddling pool next to the shed and flooded it, twice. (his garden is 18" higher than mine)

After complaints about the noise I built the fan into the back wall of the shed. I was also using some Jizer to degrease an old drill press. Apparently the Jizer could be smelt after I put the fan through the back wall of the shed (at an ambient temperature of 32 C).

The council chaps are due to come round on Monday morning. I've offered them a power supply if they want to install recording equipment, because I know the difference between "detectable if you try hard" and "statutory nuisance" having suffered _real_ noisy neighbours in the past.

Mark Rand RTFM

Easily solved. The guy just has too much time on his hands and he needs an outlet.

Go hire a car for the day exactly the same as he drives. Put a set of his numbers on and then spend the rest of the day blasting thru every speed camera you can find.

That should keep him busy with plod for a bit and out of your hair.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Visit the new Model Engineering adverts page at:-

Make sure that the council are aware of this fact. It's something they take seriously ;)

And of cause you had to do that to repair the damage done by the flooding ;)

My council officers now just ring when they get a complaint. I did have a problem with the kids having music too load at the bottom of the garden. We could not hear it in the house, neither could adjacent neighbours, but someone 3 doors away complained. After two visits, the chap decided that there was nothing wrong. This was the fourth incident that the council had investigated over several years, and they provided a nice letter on how *WE* go about dealing with harassment :)

Only after a dodgy Indian curry ;-)

Regards, Tony

Simple, go away for the day, get a decent alibi and £30 to one of the local druggies will get all his windows bricked and his car set on fire.

Saves hours of endless forms.................

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Visit the new Model Engineering adverts page at:-

incident

provided

A few years back we had fun and games from the council over one of our rented out flats. Adjacent occupant was complaing about the totally unreasonable noise made by our tenants and got the environmental health people in with recorders. Turned out that the noise they were complaining about was an ordinary washing machine running in the mid afternoon. Council told them to stop wasting their time !!

AWEM