Neighbouring Management Company Destroyed Our Land (Scotland)
tl;dr - the management company of the development behind ours cleared our land, which has hugely impacted our house and garden. Are there any legal avenues we can individually pursue? Can you recommend a lawyer that might specialise in this sort of work? Images for context.
I own a townhouse in central Edinburgh. Behind our house is a bin lane used by 11 other townhouses. Beyond that is a small patch of land (roughly 20x3m), which is part of our development. That land contained mature buddleia that were around 5m+ high. The buddleia provided a dense screen that provided security and obscured the development behind ours. To provide context, we were unaware of the apartments behind our house when we bought it, so mature was the buddleia.
In February of this year, we noticed gardening work was taking place on this land. It became clear that who ever was undertaking this work was clearing the land. We ascertained that this work had not been instructed by our residents' association or management company.
The gardeners clearing the land told us that the development behind ours had engaged them to undertake this work. Despite being informed that this land was part of our development and repeatedly requested to stop by multiple neighbours, they ignored these requests and acted quickly to clear the land.
Our house is possibly the most affected. I had cleared our garden as I had planned to build a climbing frame / kids activity centre for my children. Deciding to clear my garden was based upon there being a solid screen of budellia behind our fence. I have now held off from doing this as our garden is now completely overlooked.
People now stand and stare in from their car park or as they empty their bins. Like most city centre developments, there are a lot of AirBnBs there, so over summer, there have frequently been people outside smoking and looking into the back bedroom. This was going to be my son's room (18 months) but we have not moved him as people do look in, and headlights now shine into this room all through the night.
We bought this house as a temporary measure. When we did so, my fiancee was seven months pregnant, and the sellers of the house we had initially bought pulled out a week before we were due to exchange. We had planned on selling this house this summer (2022) as it's completely impractical for my two young children, but we chose not to as this drags on.
I'm aware it's quite hard to quantify our loss, but we would not have bought this house, even temporarily, had the back garden been so completely exposed. This small but completely secluded garden was a major reason we purchased here. There is no question that the removal of this cover has impacted our property. A few of these houses sold around the same time. Our neighbour who moved in a couple of months after us, also agrees that he wouldn't have purchased this property had the back been open.
Initially the management company of the development behind ours was hugely apologetic. They offered to restore the land, but since they have involved their insurance company, their loss adjuster has made a small offer of compensation (£2500 between 12 houses), as they claim the buddleia are starting to regrow so the loss is temporary. (Our gardeners estimate it will take 5-10 years to regain the coverage lost or around £15-25,000 to replant as it would need to be dug out etc).
My question is, is there a legal avenue that we can individually take? I've included a link to a gallery of images showing the change. I cannot believe someone can destroy our land and significantly impact 6 of the 12 houses yet offer little more than token compensation. I would also gladly take recommendations of lawyers who might specialise in pursuing something like this.
edits: grammar
Posted Sep 14, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC · edited
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Thank you for your reply. In reverse order:
A 1.5m stone wall marks the boundary of our development and their car park. Then, a slope rises about 2m before you reach our bin lane. While the buddleia was around 5m, it provided much more coverage because of this rise. The management company who arranged for the land to be cleared had initially planned to replant it, but now that they've established it's our land, they want nothing to do with it, so I'm not concerned that they will try and take it.
With regard to criminal acts, beyond the fact that their gardeners cleared this land without permission, there was a foxes den and birds nested in the trees. To the best of our knowledge, the land was cleared without considering the wildlife.
We do know who the gardeners were. They worked at an incredible pace, which picked up after we raised our objection. There are email chains and facebook group messages discussing this live. The workers initially stopped for a while, and spoke to someone at their head office, but he told them to ignore our concerns. In hindsight, we obviously should have phoned the police. At least three separate neighbours told them to stop. Their response to my fiancee was, 'do you want to pay us as well then' and 'you should be grateful, we've made your garden brighter.'
Is there anything, retrospectively that we might be able to do criminally?
Is a civil suit against the gardeners an option?
With regard to them accepting liability, we have in writing their management company accepting this was their mistake. But, as this drags on, they are now drawing back on that initial enthusiasm.
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Unfortunately, your comment has been removed for the following reason(s):
Criminal damage is not an offence in Scots law. Please ensure you read the post properly in future and only comment if you can offer legal advice based upon the correct legal system.
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Unfortunately, your comment has been removed for the following reason(s):
Criminal damage is not an offence in Scots law. Please ensure you read the post properly in future and only comment if you can offer legal advice based upon the correct legal system.
Please familiarise yourself with our subreddit rules before contributing further. Please send a modmail if you have any further queries.