Green box on property

[Jrich]

Hi all,
Hope you are all safe & sound

Can anyone help me,we bought a new house 7 years ago and the wall seems to be changed from a circular end to a cut off straight wall to house a green communications box...
Upon looking at my deeds it's shows the wall to be curved and not straight,obviously to house this green box...
It is time for us to renew the wall and would like to renew wall back to original location,I feel the wall has been made shorter to accommodate this horrible green box...
Who do I get in touch with to enquire about it...I always see virgin there ,so must belong to them...

Any help is much appreciated

Kindets regards

First thing to do is to have a solicitor search to see if Virgin Media has a wayleave for hosting the box on your property. If they do, asking them to move it will cost you thousands. If they don’t, then they have no right to have it there and you might be able to force them to move it (but would probably have to go to court to do so).

Ask yourself, before you go down this route, how much money you’re willing to pay to have a curved wall.

[Jrich]

Hi Chris
Thank you so much for your fast reply,I really appreciate it.
So to be honest it is going to cost a pretty packet to get my bit of land back,it don't bother me to much but I think if I own the land,I don't want them to just use it and not sure how they actually ended up putting it on the property.
I will have a quick look into it and let you know the outcome.

Thank you so much Chris...🙏
Kind regards

Fair enough, but the question isn’t likely to be whether or not you own the land - if the box visibly interrupts the natural line of the boundary wall, you almost certainly do own it. The point is, did a previous owner of your house grant permission for the box to be there? If they did - and they almost certainly did - then it is going to be very difficult and very expensive to get the box moved.

If the wayleave exists, then when you bought your house your solicitor should have drawn your attention to it during the usual search process prior to purchase. If you kept all your correspondence from that time, you might find it, which would save you the cost of having the search done again.

[RichardCoulter]

As a sweetener to soften the blow, could Jrich be entitled to rent payments?

I remember when cable TV in the 1970's was strewn from gutter to gutter, any houses that did not take the service received rental payments.

If so, perhaps the previous owner is still having the payments paid into their bank account??

[sollp]

Could be many reasons why this happens. Plans change on building sites, was VM informed to move cab? If so did they?
The plans may have had the cab there and builders changed on the go? Could be a genuine mistake that wasn't picked up on?
Seen it a few times on on new builds.

[RichardCoulter]

ISTR that there is a law that says that if someone encroaches onto your land and you don't challenge it, after so long it becomes theirs.

[The Installer]

If this house was new 7 years ago, and virgin was already on site as the development was being built, then the box will always have been there and will have been planned into that location when the site was being built in the first place.

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by The Installer

If this house was new 7 years ago, and virgin was already on site as the development was being built, then the box will always have been there and will have been planned into that location when the site was being built in the first place.

I think new to him not new build. Not enough info from the OP though to give any advice though really.

[damien c]

So been a while since I dealt with this sort of thing but here goes.

1: New build estates will approach all Utility companies and ask them for specific requirements, in terms of BT/VM typically where they want ducting, chambers etc and they would like that providing for a reduced fee or for free.

2: Whilst the plans are being developed for the site they will usually have meetings with the relevant parties through out the whole build to make sure everything is correct, so there is little to no chance of a cabinet being left of the plans if it's a complete new build site.

3: If it's a "Re-Build" of a site, as in houses knocked down and re-built then the ducting, chambers, cabinets and poles typically stay where they are due to the immense cost/time of moving them.

4: If the VM Network was built in to the estate after the estate was built, then a survey would have taken place by a Network Planner, and then where required meetings would have taken place with residents, especially those where they were looking to utilise space, that was in part of someone's property as they would need legal permission to do so.


To me this seems like Option 4, the estate was built then later VM went in and built it.

There should have been information provided to the new owner of the property around any "Wayleave" permissions from the previous owners etc as they get renewed after so long, as such they need to know the previous T&C's.

You can ask for the cabinet to be moved, and there will be high cost's involved due to several requirements, who bares that cost will depend on the documentation but typically, it's the person who want's it moved that has to pay.

Also be aware, that the age of the roads/footpaths could also make it extremely expensive to move due to the cost's to do what is called "Full Width Reinstatement" which the last time I costed for it (over 5 years ago), for a customer due to the landlord being a specific type, it came out to over £0.5M (half a million) in order to install ducting down 1 section of the road!

Good Luck!