Ask anyone who has been through a boundary dispute and they will tell you the same thing: it started with something small. A fence post moved a few inches, a hedge cut back further than expected, a new extension that seemed to be creeping across the line. Within months it has become solicitors’ letters, surveyors’ reports and two households who no longer speak.
The law does not give the answer people expect
The first surprise for most parties is that the Land Registry title plan does not fix the boundary. Under the general boundaries rule in the Land Registration Act 2002, a registered plan shows only the general position of the line, not its precise legal location. Establishing where the boundary actually runs means going back to the original conveyance, historic plans, physical features on the ground and, often, decades of use.
That evidence is rarely conclusive. Two competent surveyors can honestly disagree. Which is why a boundary trial is such an unreliable way to spend a sum that often exceeds the value of the land in dispute.
What the dispute is really about
In my experience the fence is rarely the point. Behind it sits a sense of being wronged, a worry about the value of the home, a planning application that was never discussed, or simply years of small irritations that finally found an outlet. A judgment cannot address any of that. A mediation can.
How a mediation day runs
Both sides provide a short written position with the plans, photographs and reports that matter. On the day, I meet the neighbours together and then separately. The joint session lets each side hear the other properly, often for the first time in months. The private sessions are where the realistic options get tested: what a trial would cost, what a judge could and could not order, what each household actually needs to live comfortably next to the other.
Settlements in boundary cases tend to be practical. An agreed line, recorded on a plan and lodged with the Land Registry as a determined boundary or a boundary agreement. A new fence, paid for in agreed shares. An easement over a strip of drive. A commitment about hedges, lighting or access. Terms a court would never have ordered because nobody asked it to.
The courts expect it
The Court of Appeal confirmed in Churchill v Merthyr Tydfil that courts can order parties to engage in non-court dispute resolution, and the Civil Procedure Rules were amended in 2024 to make that power explicit. Parties who refuse a reasonable invitation to mediate risk costs sanctions. For a neighbour dispute, that makes an early mediation not just the sensible choice but the expected one.