The planning notice went up weeks ago; the setting-out pegs went in yesterday; and by your reading of the maps, the foundation line crosses onto your ground. The builder starts Monday. This is the classic quia timet emergency — restraining the wrong before it lands — and it’s won or lost in the days before the concrete.
The Weekend Sprint
Evidence first: photographs of the pegs and site, dated; your title documents and the maps; the planning drawings against what’s marked on the ground; and — gold if obtainable quickly — an engineer’s or surveyor’s view of where the line actually runs, because boundary cases are decided by measurement, not conviction. The strong letter today: a solicitor’s demand for written confirmation the works will not cross the line, with the injunction application flagged if assurance doesn’t come — a surprising share of these cases end right there, and the letter strengthens everything that follows. The application readied in parallel: if Monday comes without assurance, the papers exist rather than beginning.
Why the Timing Is Everything
Land is the terrain where damages classically fail — every parcel unique, a strip taken never quite compensated — which is exactly why courts will restrain the imminent incursion on real evidence. But two clocks run against the waiting owner: quia timet requires imminence proven, and the evidence of that (the pegs, the bookings, the correspondence ignored) is freshest now; and completed works change the weighing — courts treat the wall standing differently to the wall threatened, and urgency claimed after the foundations convinces nobody. The property injunction page carries the full machinery, including the accused builder’s chair.
And afterwards: the neighbour relationship survives the case — same hedge, decades ahead — which is why the resolution channels (adjusted works, agreed terms, strips regularised) end most of these disputes, and why files here run prepared for hearing and pointed at settlement. The Mediation Diploma isn’t decoration in boundary work.
Pegs in the ground, Monday coming? 01 5827148 — this weekend, not next week.