Overhanging Trees from Neighbour

You have no right to keep anyone's property i.e. if a ball lands on your land you cannot keep it and must be returned if it is asked for,. Similarly you can cut branches that overhang your property as they are trespassing but you must return these to your neighbour, the red flag about offering them back to your neighbour is just a way of lawfully keeping them if you so desire, if you don't want to keep them just place them back over the fence. If he returns them then as it is his property/waste he would be guilty of illegally dumping waste. I suggest you inform him of this and then proceed to cut and return.
 
What advice above?

I'm advocating having a conversation ahead of time to foster or maintain good neighbourly relations and head off any potential complaints about damage to property or fly tipping

There's a world of difference between offering a neighbour an opportunity to give input on a process and working out ways it will be helpful to them, and making a set of decisions for them that lumbers (;)) them with a set of consequences they aren't prepared for.
 
I get you Robin, I really do. I am new to the neighbourhood so don't have an axe to grind. I've been to his place, greeted him, advised of the situation and could not be more thankful/ grateful when he offered to pay should I get a gardener to tend to these trees.
I explained the same to his son who lives with him and everything was good. The son even offered me his number and even followed up on the progress for a quote.
Then out of nowhere, his son brings over a guy in my absence who is allegedly a gardener (I seriously doubt it). This gardener told my wife that legally they don't have to do anything. Once my gardener gave me a quote and I forwarded to his son, his reply was that he is not going to pay as he is not legally obliged and he was only trying to help by getting quotes. This has left a lasting feeling of betrayal in me and I am keen to do the bare minimum to achieve an interference free garden on my side.
He even messaged me lately that if height is an issue, we should get it trimmed ourselves.
 
You need to decide what you want before you start cutting.
If you go along and cut everything back to the line of the fence then it's going to look rubbish, forever. Anything cut back to brown, will stay that way. The grass underneath still won't grow much better as the tree as still taking the water and nutrients out of the ground.


If you think any of the stems are pushing against the fence/fenceposts, then to remove them you will need to gain access to it from the neighbours side, and cut back beyond the boundary (assuming the fence is the boundary)


If you want to keep it as it is, giving the sides a trim, it could be gone over with a long reach hedgetrimmer.
There's not much you can do about the top without the neighbour's permission and access, half of it is on his side.



You say you haven't been in the house long, at the minute you have what might be a nice cool place to sit in the shade on a hot summers day.
 
Looking at the growing habit of the growing tips it looks as if it could be Thuja which will re grow from brown wood.
If you twist, crush the soft growth in you hands and it gives off a citrus odour then it could be
 
psarinuk said:
This gardener told my wife that legally they don't have to do anything
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Not an unfair comment; right now there isn't any legal binding in your neighbour to act even though the law recognises and provides for you to take action to reduce a nuisance element from this tree

How much was the quote?

psarinuk said:
This has left a lasting feeling of betrayal
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And this is how things start going off the rails. You've just moved in and already emailing the neighbours with government advice pages on how to shop people to the council and get them slapped with ASBOs

There is a world of difference between "it is illegal to let a hedge grow over 2m" and "being more than 2m high is one of a list of criteria that a council require when assessing if they might take action on a complaint".
Submitting that complaint to the council comes with a price tag that is likely in excess of paying for trimming and it's not guaranteed that the council would find in your favour, so do consider carefully whether it's a route worth going down.

So, it seems like the old buffer is a decent sort who offered to pay to have the trimming done, which is nice. Someone then tells the son they don't have to do it and that might be a financial sigh of relief for them, or it might lend itself well to the son's natural predilection for being a tw.. Who knows!'v Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about..

Either way, it seems like things could rapidly go pear shaped from here; perhaps speaking to the old man again and getting him on side for your plan and you bearing the cost of changes could reverse that. At the very least, from the last message, the son seems agreeable to permitting you access to their side to overall trim it to a height agreeable to both parties..
 
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