I’ll preface this by saying I’m not personally fussed on this fence going up. I only really go to the rear of my property to take the bins out, but my elderly neighbour is concerned so trying to help out, whilst avoiding the awkward moment with the neighbours…

To the rear of my property (England, FYI) is a cul-de-sac road. On the other side of the road are some properties, some parking areas, and a couple of small grassed areas.

I was always under the impression the grassed areas were public land. I’ve seen the council mow it, for example.

The neighbour that lives adjacent to that land (which of course may well be theirs!), is putting up a fence around it. As a bit of context, it’s been used as parking for at least 15 years (before we moved in), and nobody has ever said anything to anybody parking there.

The neighbours we are attached to are elderly, with the lady wheelchair bound and the husband essentially her carer. I know they applied for a front drive (both our front gardens are long steep slopes of grass with steps leading up). I think the plan was to firstly provide some parking, and secondly work on a more easily accessible route (ramp etc), but were refused for being too close to a junction.

To avoid the steps which the lady cannot get up, they park around the back where they have step free access via their back gate.

The parking there is extremely limited (3 or 4 cars). I never park there for that reason (I park on the road outside my house or as close as possible). However as they basically need to use that route, over the years when they haven’t been able to park in the spots, they (and others) have parked on the grass area.

You can see why I just formed the assumption it was public land.

The neighbours (I assume, I don’t know them and haven’t seen anyone actually putting the fence up, it just appeared out of nowhere haha), have fenced off that area. This brings me to my predicament.

1. I personally am not fussed. It’s just a grassed area. I’ve never used it. I actually thought it looked dreadful with all the dead grass from cars parking, but also it’s not my grass, so didn’t particularly care about that either.

2. My elderly neighbour has told me how concerned his is about getting his wife in and out of the house if they can’t park.

One obvious answer is to have their front access adapted to suit their needs. Not impossible, but it does get busy out the front so it’s entirely possible they’d have to park a reasonable distance.

They’ve (in not so blunt terms), hinted that it would helpful to them if I could find out whether it’s legal, whether it is in fact even that house that has out the fence up (can’t see who else it would be, unless the council are planning something there), and basically just give them an answer.

One option is I literally just knock on the neighbours door and explain the situation and say “they just wanted to confirm it’s your land”. However, that also feels incredibly awkward, and whilst it’s likely they’re just normal people and would say “yeah of course I’d be happy to show the neighbours our title plan if it helps”, it could also go the other way and end up with me having an awkward relationship with them.

As it stands, I either have a pleasant relationship with, or don’t even know/have never seen all of my immediate neighbours. That’s basically how I like it, so am not crazy on the idea of changing that 😂.

What would you do? I’m assuming I could give my local council a shout and ask them if they have any info. If there’s a way to check boundaries/title plans myself I could do that. Or I could just totally keep my nose out of it. I \*really\* don’t want to be the nosy neighbour, but I also want to be helpful to the elderly couple next door!

I’ve attached a pic of the area in question with a red line showing the new fence.

Neighbours putting up a fence. How to figure out if land is private or public, and who to speak to?