I am constantly astonished at how much animosity can be created between neighbours over the simple matter of a boundary fence or wall.

I have many boundary dispute cases under my belt and in every single case, I have acted for one party only, but live in hope that, one day, the waring factions will get together and agree at an early stage  to appoint me as what is described as a Joint Expert.

As a Surveyor, you have to tell the truth and our report conclusions are defined by the facts of the case.

Please bear with me on this and certainly don't hold this comment against me if you are thinking of talking to me about a dispute that you have, but every client that I have dealt with has firmly and irrevocably believed that they are in the right, but that may not be the situation when the facts are investigated.

So, how do you resolve a boundary dispute problem?

First of all, we carry out a site inspection and take very accurate measurements of our Clients site and the position of the building on it to prepare a drawing, at whatever scale necessary, to define the problem.

At that time, we get the Clients side of the dispute which, to be frank, we take as a hearsay report until such time that further and much more detailed investigations have been completed.

There is invariably never the opportunity to go onto the site of the neighbour's house, with whom there is a dispute, to take similar measurements from that side of the disputed boundary.

It is most often the case that the other neighbour is not going to spend a penny employing a Surveyor or Solicitor to put forward his argument and will rely upon his own thoughts, no matter how correct or incorrect they may be.

Surveyors are not concerned as to which side of the fence they are on as it makes no difference whether we are acting for the owner who is in the right or in the wrong.

What we do is investigate the facts, as far as they are available.

Those facts are provided by the Title Deeds which, for a modern house, will only likely be the Land Registry sourced Ordinance Survey based plan.

From experience, I know that the Ordinance Plans are inaccurate!

However, to a wiley Surveyor, there are sometimes ways and means of getting a look at and copies of the Developers Plans, but if you think that I am going to tell you where you will find these, I would be doing myself no favour and possibly losing an instruction!

For older property, we can often get a hold of the original Title Deeds.

Sometimes these are held with the Land Registry to their archives and those documents can be called up within a relatively short time, on request, and at reasonable cost, and inspected at the local Land Registry office in Durham.

We investigate every piece of information that we can possibly get a hold of to establish where it was intended that the boundaries would be between the two properties and from there we mark them on the drawings prepared.

This process can be much more complicated than as described, but we are aiming to describe that we investigate as far as we possibly can before we arrive at a decision on boundary position which is based on fact.

Sometimes, the Client receives a report that is fully supportive of his or her belief as to where the boundary is positioned, but sometimes the Client was wrong.

One particular point that you need to know is that when these disputes escalate to the point where Solicitors become involved, the costs increase alarmingly.

Generally, a Surveyor's Report will cost somewhere within the range of £300 to £1,000, depending on the nature of the dispute and the extent of the investigations that need to be carried out.

Surveyors charge out their time on an hourly rate basis, very much the same way that Solicitors do, although Solicitors are generally charging more per hour!

Once the situation has been reached where both sides have instructed Solicitors, that's when the Clients cost burden goes through the roof.

Let me give you a perfect example.

For many years I dealt with a Client who took a dispute involving a triangular piece of driveway land all the way to the Courts.

That triangle was 3.5m deep and around 1.5m wide at the roadway end.

The Judge did not resolve the case in his favour and he had to pay all of his own Solicitor and Barrister costs and the legal costs of his neighbour.

His neighbour's costs, alone, amounted to just under £26,000.

His own costs were around £32,000.

That dispute over the triangle of land that extended to 5.25 sq m had cost him £58,000 in legal costs and four years of stress and heartache.

It didn't end there. For three years afterwards, whilst we remained involved, he paid fees to another Surveyor, from out of the area, that Surveyor providing him with a Report that gave the same conclusion of the Court.

He then employed another Solicitor, to see if he could sue his original Solicitor for negligence, as he contended that they had not handled the case correctly for him.

Then he found a London Barrister who was quite happy to take another fee for Opinion on the original Court case findings and a further legal view on the actions of his original Solicitor.

That Surveyor got £2,000, that Solicitor got £8,500 and that Barrister got £3,000.

You will, by now, see my point.

If you are involved in a boundary dispute, sort it out sooner, rather than later, even if that means a compromise solution, which neither side of the dispute will be happy with, but it will save you both a great deal of money.

What else can I tell you?

Ah yes, the Client who liked me on sight because I didn't complain about his donkey sized Rotweiller puppy leaving sticky and globular trails of foamy white saliva all over my suit trousers the day we first met on site!

He was one of life's characters who resolved a boundary dispute which appeared to centre around the neighbours claim that the 40ft+ magnificent conifer was in the neighbours site, whereas the conifer was proven to be exactly on the boundary line.

A few days after the neighbour had moved the boundary fences to correct position, meeting the broad circumference tree trunk at it's half way point, the Client hired a cherry picker - one of those trucks with an extended height working platform on its flat bed, the sort of thing you see them using to maintain the lights on the sides of dual carriageways.

He didn't hire a chain saw, he bought one and proceeded to trim all of the branches of what his neighbour had considered to be his prized conifer, at the exact halfway point from the lowest branch to the highest.

Then there was the Client who was so clearly in the wrong, who had to agree with my report findings as they were indisputable, but still continued to attempt to negotiate various points in his favour.

The day before his Court Hearing, at which point the Judge would ratify the findings of my Report, he telephoned me asking my views on 16 points on which he wished to negotiate!

He did not believe in my viewpoint that the Judge was likely to be unimpressed.

Reaching exasperation, I called him a fool, then I called him a bloody idiot.

Still he persisted.

Eventually, I told him that if he did put his 16 points to the Judge and, more specifically, dealt with the Judge the way he was dealing with me, the Judge would lead him to the front door of Newcastle County Court and then proceed to walk him home kicking him, very hard, in the backside (an alternative term was used in the conversation), at every third step for the whole of the 16 mile journey to his home!

And then, of course, there is the complete and b*s*a*d neighbour from hell, that fortune put before me as my Client.

That is a very long and involved tale that I do not intend to go into here!