Listen: hedge wars with neighbours

Each year its estimated almost 5 million of us (4.7m) fall out with our neighbours over tree roots, over grown hedges and our sunlight being blocked out. A freedom of information request revealed last year UK local authorities received 1,604 official complaints from residents about their neighbour’s hedges – but experts say this is just this is just a fraction of the annual disputes between neighbours over the issue.

The research on behalf of Churchill Home Insurance found hedge wars are erupting across the UK and with justification. Only one in eleven (nine per cent) complaints made to local councils about neighbours’ hedges in 2019 were rejected.

On average, over a million householders each year suffer damage to their property, or experience an accident, caused by a neighbour’s trees and hedges. Almost 600,000 households have issues with the light to their property being blocked by neighbour’s plants and over 440,000 have had issues with subsidence from the roots of trees planted next door.

Aston spoke to Andy Rogers, neighbour mediator at CEDR (the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution) to discuss the research findings and also gave tips and advice.

Photo by Maxwell Young on Unsplash