Who should pay?

[willowman]

We live next to a residential mobile home park, and the land level of the park is about 2ft-3ft higher than our property.
There is a wooden retaining wall between us holding back the soil. This wood is now rotten and the wall is collapsing, theatening to cause problems for our property.
The new owner of the site is letting it run down, and is doing no repairs to the site.
We spoke to a representitive of the owner in October, who said the wall would be repaired. No action at all, so we wrote to the company stating that, in order to protect our property, if we did not hear from them by Jan 14 we would get the wall repaired and sent them an invoice.
Still no communication from them.
What is the legal position now? Can we carry out repairs and send them an invoice?

[voltr4m4x]

I would presume that you own the property which is under threat from the collapsing retaining wall and that it is clear that the retaining wall is the sole responsibility of the site owners on which the mobile homes are situated. If the answer to my assumption is "yes" then you will need to serve a Statutory Notice upon the owners of the site requiring them to effect repairs within a specified time. Retain a copy of the Statutory Notice for your own purposes.
Take photographs of the wall overlooking your own property for future reference.

At the same time, you should contact your Household Insurance Company (again assuming you have cover for legal expenses with them) and request that their legal representatives take the matter up on your behalf without delay.

[terambulan]

Presuming they erected the wood fence to protect their property (which it is still doing) they dont need to repair it.

You should have your own fence to protect your property and that is what you could be seen to be erecting now.

[willowman]

Sorry terambulam, you've missed the point.
The wooden wall is holding back 3ft of soil. If the wall collapses then the danger is that this soil will collapse into a shallow dyke between our properties causing flooding problems. If the collapse of soil is severe enough then it could reach our buildings and cause damp and damage.
Building a wall on our side of the dyke won't prevent this.
The owners of the mobile home park surely have a legal obligation to prevent their property causing damage to other people?
If your next door neighbours had a dangerous chimney stack which threatened to fall onto your house, you would expect them to repair it, yes? You wouldn't expect them to say "We're not repairing it. You must strenghten your roof in case it collapses"

[MrBounty]

If you've had no luck in contacting them, then why not get in contact with your solicitor?

Getting things done "by the book" would surely help a bit more.....and i dont think the owner of this land would overlook a legal letter regarding his property.....

[buildersmate]

I can't add much to Volt's good answer, except that this website seems another possible source of info for you - more specialist on this type of stuff.
The case highlighted has tones similar to yours (whose responsibility to hold back soil when levels are different) - though you might wish to register your own question ere.
http://www.gardenlaw.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.ph p?p=7574&

[willowman]

Thanks all for your input.
As usual in these cases there are possible complications.
The new owners of the site are doing nothing to the site because they want to clear it of residents, so they can redevelop it. They are not a nice family, and have been known to make veiled threats to the residents to scare them into selling - I'm sure you're getting the picture.
We run a business next door (a boarding cattery) and can't afford to p**s them off in case of retaliation which could adversly affect our business, so we are treading carefully.
All very tricky.
The cost of repairing the wall would be a few hundred quid, so we could have it done ourselves, but why should we pay for their repairs just because they're being bloody minded?
The local council are aware of happenings at the site, maybe we could get them to issue a notice to effect the repairs?

[buildersmate]

There's another possible angle, Willowman. The Environment Agency has an obligation with regards to flooding, and I suspect there are statutory obligations on landowners to ensure natural watercourses are maintained. However I don't know what happens with drainage ditches (man-made watercourses). I guess (but don't know) whether you own the land on which the ditch sits, or the the pain in the arris neighbour. You could try making enquiries there - I understand that you'd rather have 'the Authorities' dealing with them to de-personalise the issue from it appearing to initiate from you.