GPS Boundary Survey

[Mito Man]

Long shot but maybe someone here knows. The fields beside my parent's place are owned by a church. Out of the blue the farmer who is renting them said that the church are sending someone over sometime this week to do a GPS survey to mark the boundary due to the hedgerows etc migrating. Our title plan is pretty useless for accuracy being hand drawn however the deeds do state that the boundary is marked by paint on various trees which is still just about visible. Then again I don't know what the church's deeds say and they will be older and take precedent I believe.

I'm wondering how the heck some surveyor is going to go round to mark the boundary using GPS coordinates when the deeds or title plan etc never had them?

[mik]

The lord works in mysterious ways - to try and take your dad’s land.

It doesn’t follow any logic for me either (seems like doing a CAD model of a 250 GTO and claiming that the original is “wrong” when differences are found between the left and right sides due to original clay differences. There must be a legal precedent here however….?

Unless they are mapping where the borders are today and creating a more accurate map for the future ?

And why mapping? Selling the field to a developer for that new nuclear waste handling site I heard about?

[Swervin_Mervin]

That's an arse about face way of dong things. The title plans will be OS based and potentially horrifically inaccurate. They are only intended as a guide. AIUI when it comes to boundary disputes etc it generally requires a survey of whats on the ground and a bit of common sense to then determine how those features are supposed to relate to the title plans.

You can't use the title plans to GPS plot on the ground the boundary.

Has the potential to blow up into a boundary dispute.

[Mito Man]

They have fenced off another field completely which was previously all open - I just assumed they were maybe going to put sheep in but it did seem like a lot of work for that.
Maybe we'll lose the entire hedgerow and a line of very old oak trees if they do go ahead and put a fence exactly where the centre of the hedge is which is where the current markings are.

[Mito Man]

Looks like the surveyor must already have done at least half of it. Sneaky.
So generally accepted boundary = centre of hedgerow and in places this is where they have marked it as such


Then there’s a few which are too far into the churches field such as this


They’ve also decided to give us a bit of the access road to the field as this is clearly not in the centre of the hedge


And there’s a few which are a bit too far over our side of the hedge such as


(The small fence posts seen in some pictures were put in by the farmer years ago just to hang rabbit fencing on to protect their crops. They aren’t the boundary and were just placed there because the alternative to put the fencing in the correct place would have been to destroy the entire hedgerow)

[mik]

Just move the ones you don’t like - if they are on your land and nobody has told you about this - why not?

[Swervin_Mervin]

Just move the ones you don’t like - if they are on your land and nobody has told you about this - why not?

This

[Mito Man]

Overall it doesn’t make a difference, if anything the survey is being more generous to us. If they really want to put a fence through it then that will be a bit sad as I don’t see how it can be done without butchering the hedge.

[Carlos]

Or are the posts in a straight line and the hedge isn't ?

So for the purpose of mapping a title which i assume they are doing it would need to be relatively straight rather than weaving with the hedge.

[Mito Man]

The boundary with the field is in a S shape.
I mean it's pretty simple on the face of it. 100 years ago or whatever it was the church sold this bit, then they decided to plant a hedgerow right on the border to make the boundary. Said hedgerow is now very big and wide but the boundary will still be in the centre of it.
Not sure where GPS comes into all of this still

[Ascender]

Looks like its all a bit of "give and take" so the pragmatic approach would just be to leave things as they are surely?

[Jobbo]

The GPS survey is almost certainly not them taking coordinates from the OS map, Land Reg title plan or old deeds - it will be then measuring and accurately locating (by GPS coords) where the physical features exist.

Nothing they do will alter the legal boundary which sounds fairly indistinct anyway. Not worth getting into any sort of fight over, and if it’s generous to you all the better.

[Mito Man]

So we had a meeting with the landowner next to us (but not the farmer) which has cleared things up. Turns out they wanted to put a fence up on their boundary with the field but the farmer had a disagreement over where it should go - They notified their landlord (the church) who decided to do a survey.

The survey has been more favourable towards us and our neighbour (1.5 acres in our favour according to the surveyor) and said neighbour was already hammering in fence posts this morning. However they want to get a digger in to speed up the process and the farmer won’t allow access as they’re now very much pissed.

What puts us in an awkward spot is that one of our survey markers cuts a 1/4 of the way into the already tight access road for the field (it’s the one pictured above which actually cuts a bit into the gate too although it doesn’t look that way from the angle).
Said neighbour wishes to use this as a negotiating point with the farmer over being granted access. i.e. “grant me access to install my fencing or I’ll put a big concrete post there and you’ll then have to move your entire gate to fit a tractor through”
So yeah, awkward for us.

Finally said neighbour is also looking to pursue legal action against the farmer for claiming countryside stewardship for 1.5 acres of land they do now own… so yeah, a bit of a shit show between those 2 with us stuck in the middle