Land ownership and rights of way

[trickywoo]

I’d be interested to hear of experiences with the following, thanks.

I own a strip of land which is access to 19 garages. I have a house one side and there is a house the other side.

All the garage owners have access over this obviously to get to their garages. I’ve never had a problem with this although increasingly they are being rented out to trades who can be noisy early in the morning. There are covenants against running a business from the houses.

This isn’t my problem although any advice on that aspect would be appreciated.

The potential problem is that the owners of the other house are making enquiries about buying some of the garages. Possibly for an extension or even to cram another house in.

I don’t want the noise / disruption or another house close to mine when it’s already a densely housed area.

Could I prevent access for anything other than normal garage use?

I’d probably move if I had to go along with it.

[bobtail4x4]

it depends on what the right of way says
I have one on my property that says for domestic and agricultural access,
next door runs a business from home, but he is a decent type, and I dont mind, if he moves things could change,

[dave123456]

I had similar a few years ago. Single garage, claimed I, and other neighbours, had informal access rights only.

After 2 falsified planning applications (the first involving building over access) he put in a legitimate application which was denied.

[LooneyTunes]

If there is no written easement, if there has been an extended use for access it is likely that they could claim a "prescriptive easement".

That doesn't mean they can then use the access for whatever they like: google will daresay throw up some interesting things if you search for the likes of intensification of use and easement. For example: https://www.falcon-chambers.com/publications/artic...

You could go down the route of writing to all of the garage owners laying out that you view any access beyond that consistent with that of a normal domestic garage as being unauthorised: putting a stake in the ground can well be important because it the puts the onus on them to disagree.

As to the trades, are the garages on the same titles as the houses? If so, I would be surprised if the covenant was specific to prevent trades operating from the houses rather than each of the properties as a whole...