Maintenance of Shared Facilities

When it comes shared facilities with neighbours, there are usually two key issues: who will foot the bill for repairs which affect more than one property; and who is responsible for the general maintenance and upkeep of shared amenities, such as apartment blocks or flats.

Dealing with Repairs

In most cases where a repair job is needed that affects your own and a neighbour’s property - a shared fence having blown down, for example - the cost of the repair will usually be a simple matter of both parties paying half each. However, if there is a Dispute Over Boundary Lines, it’ll usually boil down to looking at house deeds and other legal documents pertaining to your property to try to establish whose responsibility it is to pay for any repairs.

That said, it’s often not as clear cut as you might wish, so it’s always better to try to share the costs equally or at least to make some kind of compromise about sharing a proportion of the costs, as opposed to Taking Legal Action which can often prove more expensive.

Problems with drains and gutters on a roof can even throw up more problems in that, quite often, it can involve several parties, especially if you live in terraced housing or within a block of flats. In this situation, if you are able to identify that the source of the problem is due to someone’s negligence, you are quite within your rights as an individual, or collectively where it’s appropriate, to make this person foot the bill entirely themselves.

Examples might be where someone has blocked the main drain by putting items down their own drain, or problems where gutters have been affected on more than one property because of one person’s failure to keep their own gutters clean. Of course, they might deny being solely responsible or even accept they’re to blame at all.

In that event, you may need to seek the advice of experts within the appropriate field to inspect the damage and to see if they are able to identify the cause of the problem which has ensued. If they’re not able to do that, you’d obviously have difficulty in proving any case in court, so you might have to end up sharing the cost of repairs anyway.

Maintenance Of Shared Facilities

If you live in student accommodation or an apartment block, you will probably have to bear some responsibility to the maintenance and general upkeep of any shared facilities. This might include cleaning a shared kitchen or bathroom/shower room facility after you have used it.

People living in apartment blocks may have a small garden area to maintain and it might be that you either take turns in making sure the garden is looking tidy and mowed in the summer. Alternatively, you might decide to club together and employ a gardener or odd job man to do this. Or, in some cases, one of you might decide to take full responsibility for the upkeep of shared facilities and be paid by the rest of the residents who will benefit from your efforts.

Even if you own your own property, if it’s semi-detached, you’ll also bear some responsibilities in sharing the maintenance of things like a dividing fence or mowing a lawn where the garden is not divided by a fence.

It’s also important to remember that if you are living in rented accommodation, the onus for certain repairs and maintenance is very likely to be the responsibility of your landlord, local authority/council or housing association. In this situation, it’s important to check your tenancy agreement to see who is responsible for what before shelling out on any repairs or maintenance, as it might not be your responsibility.