What to do if a neighbour's tree overhangs your garden - who's responsible
With a heatwave approaching the UK, gardens across the country are blooming - but this could lead to a dispute over encroaching foliage from a neighbour's garden
As the British summer starts to warm up, gardens are seeing vigorous growth, potentially spurring on arguments over the relentless advance of unruly hedges and branches from the neighbour's plot. To navigate these prickly disputes, HCB Widdows Mason's property experts are on hand to enlighten homeowners about their rights when it comes to invasive greenery.
Natalie Welsh, head of property at HCB Widdows Mason, is imparting wisdom to those with a green thumb on how to trim both roses and disputes while keeping the peace with their neighbours. She said: "It can be really frustrating when branches or plants from your neighbour's garden start to spill over into your space.
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"In England and Wales, you're allowed to cut back any branches that cross onto your property, but only up to the boundary line. Just make sure you don't step onto your neighbour's land or damage the tree itself.
"It's always best to have a friendly chat with your neighbour first. Let them know what you're planning, especially if you think you'll need a tree surgeon.
"If the branches are overhanging onto your side, you're responsible for the cost of having them removed, not your neighbour. Once you've cut them back, you're also responsible for getting rid of the branches properly.
"The cut branches belong to your neighbour, you can offer to return them, but you mustn't just throw them back over the fence - that's fly-tipping, which is illegal.
"If your neighbour doesn't want the trimmings, then it's down to you to dispose of them responsibly, whether that's your garden waste bin or taking them to the recycling centre.
"The obligations for maintenance can change over time and responsibility is often poorly documented. If any plans associated with the property show 'T' marks on the title documents - your conveyancer can advise you - then this is usually an indication of the boundaries that you are to maintain and repair.
"If there are no such 'T' marks and the title is silent as to boundaries, then it is usually the case that the boundaries are considered party boundaries. This means that the responsibility to maintain the boundaries is shared evenly with adjoining properties.
"In most situations, a friendly word with the neighbour may help establish views of ownership over any respective boundary in question and avoids any disputes or misunderstandings later.
"Boundary disputes can often become costly and acrimonious - if you're not sure about your rights or think things might get tricky, it's a good idea to speak to a legal expert first." HCB Group are lawyers specialising in education, property, probate and more, reports the Express.
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Daily Mirror
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mirror
‘I'm a shipwreck detective for treasure – there's billions more gold down there'
The lure of sunken treasure under the waves has wreck-hunting salvage investigators scouring the sea beds to make their millions – but ownership of the lustrous loot is always hotly contested A treasure trove of gold coins, Chinese porcelain, emeralds and pearls worth £15 billion from sunken Spanish galleon San Jose has been discovered at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. Images of the 'holy grail' of shipwrecks were taken by salvage investigators this week, showing the final resting place of the warship. Its contents were bound for the Spanish treasury until it was ambushed by the British Navy three centuries ago. Since then, adventurers have dreamed of finding its legendary loot – including 200 tonnes of gold, silver, gems and possibly diamonds – originally destined for Panama. The lure of retrieving sunken gold has seen wreck-hunting treasure seekers go to extraordinary lengths - often in very controversial circumstances. The Spanish frigate Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes was sunk by the British off the coast of Portugal in 1804 - taking with it millions of silver – known as pieces of eight – and gold coins, said to be worth £370 million. A US treasure hunter, Odyssey Marine Exploration, scoured the sea bed in 2007 and recovered almost 500,000 of them, taking them back to America. An ensuing legal battle resulted in the treasure returned to Spain, where it is now on display in a museum in Cartagena. A notorious wreck hunter in 1988 fought for the new-found riches of the Californian gold rush, from the 'ship of gold," which sank off the coast of South Carolina in 1857. The SS Central America was carrying 21 tonnes of gold nuggets, ingots, dust and coins when a hurricane sank it on its way from Panama to New York City - scattering the gold on the sea bed. Treasure hunter Tommy Thompson used sonar to bring up thousands of gold bars and coins, worth around £220m today. He was jailed in 2015 after failing to disclose the whereabouts of the missing loot. And while a judge earlier this year agreed to end his sentence, saying he was no longer convinced 'that further incarceration is likely to coerce compliance,' he immediately began a two year sentence for a related criminal contempt charge. Finding sunken treasure is no mean feat - explaining why salvage companies want a cut of the spoils. Shipwreck detective Nigel Pickford, a maritime historian and author of Samuel Pepys and the Strange Wrecking of the Gloucester: The Shipwreck That Shocked Restoration Britain, tracks down wrecks. He tells The Mirror: 'I start with history books. I like to get back to original letters, diaries, journals, log books, particularly if there were other ships in the fleet which had log books. Perhaps those involved in the sinking or battle.' The San Jose, he says, was relatively easy to locate, because it was extremely well documented in log books of British ships involved in the skirmish. 'They could work out say within probably 100 square miles where that ship was,' he says. 'But now we're searching for wrecks in 10,000 square miles.' According to the United Nations, there are at least three million shipwrecks lying across our ocean floors, not all contain treasure, but are still of historical interest. As a maritime nation, many lie within our territorial waters. 'When you think that everything went by ship until quite recently, there are many shipwrecks around the British Isles that haven't been found. And there are some interesting aeroplane wrecks too – with gold on them,' says Nigel. 'There are probably millions of wrecks around the world. But there are many we can't touch – like the ones in shallow water around Europe, which obviously means they get looted instead. 'You'd be surprised how much is still being shipped around. It might not necessarily be gold coins, but they're still high-value cargos,' says Nigel. But looters often beat bona fide recovery operators to the treasure. 'I was looking at a 17th century Dutch wreck recently which does have the location, and there are quite a lot of Spanish shipwrecks that are charted, but they're always in shallow water. These days I'm really only interested in deep wrecks,' says Nigel. 'Trawling destroys more shipwrecks than anything. Shallow shipwrecks may be easier to find, like the San Jose, but the deeper you go, the better the bounty. 'A shallow wreck might have been trawled through, dispersed, or looted. And wreck diving is dangerous. Things go wrong, and divers can only really go down to about 300ft. You can see much better using remote-operated vehicles (ROVs). And if you're looking in 15,000ft of water with an ROV, you can be fairly sure there won't be many people that have been there before.' The type of ship also matters. Wooden wrecks like the San Jose will fall apart if touched. 'You just need to know where the cargo that you're interested in might have been stowed,' says Nigel. 'You can see from the photos, coins from the San Jose are all over the sea bed. A bit of excavation with your ROVs will bring that stuff up. 'But steel wrecks have quite a high chance of still being intact. You might have to open it up on the seabed in order to get to the cargo. The most important thing on a steel wreck is to know the stowage.' Lost deep under the waves, gold treasure can look as good now as on the day it sank. 'Gold doesn't tarnish but silver does – it goes black, but it's not seriously damaged,' explains Nigel. 'I've been working on an East India cargo with a lot of porcelain, which is almost perfect. It is extraordinary what remains on a sea bed, particularly if it's really deep and there's no oxygen.' Meanwhile, thousands of First and Second World War ships are on salvage hunters' radars. 'My father Thomas Henry Pickford was in the Navy Salvage Department during World War II,' reveals Nigel, a teacher until he joined the family business. 'There was a lot of gold coming out of Europe before the Germans invaded,' he explains. 'France, Belgium and Holland were all trying to get their gold out, as was Britain. We shipped all our gold over to Canada.' British steam merchant vessel RMS Gairsoppa was hit by a German U-boat in February 1941 and went down with 85 men and a cargo full of silver bullion. A US exploration firm recovered 48 tons of silver worth £150 million in 2011, making it one of the largest and heaviest recoveries of precious metal from a shipwreck. Passengers on board the passenger ship SS City of Cairo to Brazil didn't know their ship was carrying the multi-million pound cargo. When the ship was hit by German torpedoes in November 1942, 109 people perished and its huge cache of Indian silver rupees, bound for melting for war materials in Britain, lay undisturbed until a British expedition discovered them 1,000 miles off the African coast in 2011. One of the treasure wrecks Nigel was involved in salvaging was the £32m of silver bullion that went down with the SS Tilawa en route to East Africa in November 1942. Japanese submarines torpedoed the ship, which was known as the Indian Titanic, killing 280 and more than 2,000 silver bars, due to be minted into coins, plunged to the sea bed near the Seychelles. 'I worked on a ship in the Indian Ocean with a very, very large cargo of bars of silver. That was technically extremely successful,' adds Nigel. But while a British team successfully retrieved the treasure, a court ruled the bullion belonged to South Africa. Many shipwreck finds end in a tussle between the countries who owned the ships, the country where the treasure was found, and the salvage companies, who want their share of the bounty. And not just anybody can dive for treasure. 'There's all sorts of permits needed these days, especially environmental permits,' says Nigel. 'A country's territorial waters extend 12 nautical miles out, then there's the contingent zone which goes out another 12, then economic waters which can go out to 200 miles. Increasingly, nations are claiming control of all shipwrecks within economic waters. 'A friend of mine had his ship seized in Spain's territorial waters. He's adamant he was outside them. In UK waters you probably wouldn't get arrested in quite the same way, but it's best working in international waters.' Even once a sunken wreck is found, many countries choose to leave the treasure where it is. In 1771, a Dutch ship loaded with precious works of art destined for Catherine the Great of Russia was caught in a storm and sank. 'It was found off the coast of Finland in 1999,' says Nigel. 'But the archeologists say no one should touch anything. I don't know if the paintings have survived.' Famous sunken treasure ships yet to be discovered include the 16th century Portuguese carrack Flor de Mar, which sank off Malaysia laden with treasure on its way to the king, and a British 17th century galleon, The Merchant Royal, which was carrying £1bn in gold sits untouched 30 miles off the coast of Cornwall. Nigel says: 'Personally, I wouldn't waste my time with the Flor de Mar. I would be worried that a lot of the cargo has been pillaged. 'But I've looked for the Merchant Royal three times – it's a fantastic wreck. I'm sure I know where it is now!' And there's the Portuguese galleon Santa Rosa, which sank off Brazil after a gunpowder explosion in 1726. Nigel enthuses: 'It has a very, very valuable cargo of gold. Probably even more gold than the San Jose.' A treasure hunter's work is clearly never dull!
South Wales Guardian
38 minutes ago
- South Wales Guardian
Family of Air India crash victims say they have been ‘abandoned'
Akeel Nanabawa, his wife Hannaa Vorajee and their four-year-old daughter Sara Nanabawa were returning home to the UK when they died. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed shortly after take-off on Thursday in what is one of the deadliest plane accidents in terms of the number of British nationals killed. The aircraft struck a medical college hostel in a residential part of Ahmedabad, killing 241 of the 242 people on board. The sole surviving passenger was Briton Vishwash Kumar Ramesh. Air India said the plane was carrying 169 Indian nationals, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese nationals and one Canadian. Mr Nanabawa ran a recruitment firm, while his wife volunteered at a local Islamic school in Gloucester – where they lived. Members of their family have flown from the UK to Ahmedabad following last week's tragedy. 'There is no UK leadership here, no medical team, no crisis professionals stationed at the hospital,' said a family spokesman. 'We are forced to make appointments to see consular staff based 20 minutes away in a hotel, while our loved ones lie unidentified in an overstretched and under-resourced hospital.' Another family member said: 'We're not asking for miracles – we're asking for presence, for compassion, for action. 'Right now, we feel utterly abandoned.' The family also have several of what they described as 'key concerns', including a 'lack of transparency and oversight in the identification and handling of remains'. They called for a 'full crisis team' at the hospital within 24 hours, a British-run identification unit, and financial support for relatives of the victims. A local doctor had 'confirmed' the delays in releasing the bodies were 'linked to severe under-staffing', according to the families, who also called for an independent inquiry into the UK Government's response. 'Our loved ones were British citizens. They deserved better in life. They certainly deserve better in death,' the statement added. Among the Britons believed to have been on the Gatwick-bound flight was Arjun Patoliya, who had flown to Gujarat from London to scatter the ashes of his wife, Bharti. Others included radiologist Dr Prateek Joshi, from Derby, and sisters Dhir and Heer Baxi, couple Fiongal and Jamie Greenlaw-Meek, and Raxa Modha, Rudra Modha and K Mistri, from Wellingborough. UK air accident investigators are already in India and are assisting the Indian authorities. A Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office spokeswoman said: 'Our staff continue to work around the clock in the UK and India to support the families and loved ones of all those impacted by the crash. 'We have set up a Reception Centre at the Ummed Hotel, near the Ahmedabad airport, and have a dedicated helpline to provide support and advice for the families and friends of British nationals – friends or family should call 020 7008 5000. 'If you are in India, you should call +91 (11) 24192100 for support, including through in-person consular staff who are available to support families of British nationals, including accompanying them to the hospital. 'Furthermore, the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch has deployed an investigation team to support the Indian-led investigation on the ground, and UK forensic experts are there to support the consular response.'
Edinburgh Live
2 hours ago
- Edinburgh Live
King Charles and Prince William send 'clear message' to Harry in key move
Our community members are treated to special offers, promotions and adverts from us and our partners. You can check out at any time. More info A royal commentator has suggested that King Charles delivered a pointed message to Prince Harry with a significant gesture. The entire working Royal Family gathered alongside the King on the Buckingham Palace balcony for the climax of this year's Trooping the Colour, which is the monarch's official birthday parade. The event saw the royals present a united front as they greeted the public and marvelled at the impressive RAF flypast. This display of unity comes shortly after Prince Harry, who was absent from the gathering, made claims in an explosive interview that his father, currently receiving cancer treatment, had ceased communication with him and expressed uncertainty about how much time his father had left. During the balcony scene, the King positioned himself centrally among his kin, with his firstborn and successor, Prince William, stationed right beside him. In the previous year, the Princess of Wales was adjacent to the King, marking her first public outing post-cancer diagnosis. However, this year's rearrangement, with William by the King's side, is seen by body language expert Judi James as a direct signal to Harry, who is now based in California. Speaking to the Express, she remarked: "Charles tends to pick out the most important people in his life at that time to pay attention to during a balcony appearance. "Kate has often been the object of his attention, but to chat to William suggested a new era of warmth and compatibility between the two men," reports the Mirror. "William's pose resembled the pose he would adopt when talking to his grandmother too. With his hands clasped in front of his torso, he signalled a sense of respect to his father and to the crown. As a message to Harry, Charles, and William would have signalled unity and a united purpose." Former BBC Royal correspondent Jennie Bond also picked up on the nuanced change on the balcony, telling the Mirror: "I think the fact that William stood next to his father on the balcony was a signal that things are returning to normal. "Last year was an exception, with the Princess of Wales taking on her first public duty since her cancer diagnosis, and I think the King was showing his special support for her by asking her to stand alongside him. But today it was the correct order and, in a way, that was quite reassuring." At this year's event, there was another notable alteration as Kate took her place beside the King and Queen on the dais during the military parade at Horse Guards Parade, reflecting her role as Colonel of the Irish Guards. This marked a significant moment for Kate, who last year was unable to assume this position due to undergoing treatment for cancer, instead joining her children to observe the ceremony. Jennie commented further: "I also thought it was highly significant to see Catherine on the dais alongside the King and Queen. She was there not only as a very senior member of the Royal Family but as Colonel in Chief of the Irish Guards as they marched by. "It was a very powerful image of our next Queen alongside her father-in-law who has made no secret of the respect he has for Catherine, especially after the cancer journey they have shared. It certainly gave you the feeling that royal life is pretty much back on track after the scary past 18 months."
