By Petejames
United Kingdom 
Our neighbours garden is so overgrown that the roots of her evergreen trees which stand over 30 feet tall are demolishing a party wall and ivy growing up the facia of her house is now growing into our guttering and onto our roof space and I am extremely concerned that the ivy will grow under our tiles, causing untold damage. I wrote to our neighbour in January 2017 and was promised remedial work would be undertaken, but six months later nothing has been done and the situation worsens. Where do I go next please?
5 Jul, 2017
Answers
if you have buildings insurance on your house, talk to the insurance company - many policies have legal cover and they may pick it up and deal with it for you, now the ivy's encroaching onto your house - ivy damages brickwork.
5 Jul, 2017
If your property is presently incurring damage then you must take action on your own to correct the situation at your own expense. First, you must accurately record all the problems both written and in photos to prove in fact that their actions or inactions are causing the situation. Also have on hand your written notice to your neighbor and their written acknowledgement that they would take remedial action. Then get estimates of cost to be incurred by you to correct the damages with a final notice that time is of the essence and you will soon take action on your own at your own expense. Their big error was to promise you that they would take it upon themselves to perform the remedial work. Once the work has been done and paid for by you, go to small claims court (of course if the amount is within small claims limits for your area of residence) to recover the cost incurred by you based upon their inaction for them to do as they promised. If within small claims limits you do not need a solicitor to do this, otherwise you do. If no REAL action is taken to correct the problems then legalities don't have a leg to stand on....remember promises are meant to be broken and lawyers are all bark...it is the court that has the bite. Good Luck!
5 Jul, 2017
In the meantime if you cut the stems of the ivy on your house as low down as you can the tops will die, slowly but surely. When they are quite dead and brown they should be easy to just lift off the wall. They don't look good while this is happening but trying to get it off while still green is hard as it keeps breaking.
6 Jul, 2017
Hi, welcome to GoY, can you speak to your neighbour about this ?, if you're not on friendly terms, the only thing you can do, is to consult a solicitor, and explain the situation, he/she may send them a letter saying that if nothing is done about this within a certain period, you will be forced to take legal action, Derek.
5 Jul, 2017