DB Form signature

Please can you help. We have been trying to reach a boundary agreement with our neighbour for 5 years.  At our own expense we resorted to appointing a solicitor and a surveyor to try and move things forward. The surveyor completed his report in May 2023 and this was sent to our neighbour with a plan of the boundary. Last December we had the boundary surveyed and marked out by the surveyor and our neighbour's representative. Our neighbour has recently indicated by email to our solicitor that they accept the boundary, but despite being sent the DB form several times by our solicitor, from January 2024 onwards, has not signed and returned it. In the meantime our solicitor sent the DB form to Land Registry in May 2024. 

The situation has become very stressful. I rang Land Registry on 21 October 2024 to find out the general time scale of a DB application and asked advice on what to do if our neighbour won't sign the DB form. The advisor I spoke to said that the application could be expedited and I was told clearly that it could be processed without our neighbour's signature and our neighbour would then be sent details of the application and invited to respond. I confirmed this again during the conversation.

Following the expedition of the application, our solicitor received a requisition and the surveyor and solicitor have been working through the actions needed. However the requisition has a request that our neighbour's signature is needed on the DB form, which is contrary to what I had been told. We are anxious that we don't delay or lose the expedition process, but we are concerned that if our neighbour will not sign the form the application will fail. 

Please can you advise?

Many thanks


 

Margaret - our PG 40 supplement section 4 sets out the guidance on how a determined boundary application should be made and the registration process - Boundary agreements and determined boundaries (PG40s4) - GOV.UK
You will see that there are a number of factors involved one of which whether all the affected landowners have signed/provided consents. Every application is treated on merit and if no such signature/consents are included then decisions have to be made as appropriate - in many cases we may for example request that the neighbour does sign the form/consent but if they won;t then that's the answer to provide. A decision will then be made re next steps as appropriate and as per the guidance linked to  

Hello Adam

Many thanks for your swift reply (I had problems registering to post here hence making an alternative email/registration which confused things, but today I received an invitation to re-register using my original email which has sorted the registration out!).

Thank you for the link to the guidance document for Boundary agreements, I had originally looked at this before making the call to Land Registry to clarify about the signature and was initially relieved when I was told that the application could go ahead without the signature and it was expedited. I understand from what you say that it will actually be at the discretion of the case officer as to what the next steps will be. We will ask our conveyancer to reply to the requisition as far as possible to date, and we can only hope that we will be able to proceed, as unfortunately we just can't see any other way forward.

Thank you

M

 

Hello M - I would suggest that's the right way forward. Such things can only ever be dealt with on merit as every boundary plus neighbours are unique to themselves. It would be 'great' (for some) I suspect if things were much more clear cut and simple/obvious but the history of land ownership and boundaries in England & Wales goes back centuries and ultimately, now people can't use swords etc to win the discussion, ideally you want parties to be in agreement if you want to get things done/resolved and crucially binding. There can be ways forward but that all depends on the specifics involved as explained and the PG 40 tries to cover that as best it can.