Rights of access issues pre-completion?

This is something that is going to need the solicitor and the valuer to work on with the lender (Halifax).

If they can be convinced it will not affect their security or the value of the property either way then they may allow completion.

If the solicitor can find the indemnity insurance (they must have it on record still from 2014) then that will assist greatly unless it is only insuring the previous owner and not the property.

Nice to show a picture of a Japanese house, although not sure of its relevance ( '_' ).

There are four courses of action I can think of. The first is for the vendor to request the file from their conveyancer from 2014 and find out whether there is an existing indemnity policy.
The second would be to check whether it is too late to take out a policy yourself.
The third is to request permission from the neighbour to grant access on foot across their driveway (I’m assuming it is a pedestrian gate, rather than vehicular). It may be that if they are concerned about creating a permanent right of way, they would agree to an annual “peppercorn” charge for which you would have access through your gate as this wouldn’t create a permanent legal right of way.
And finally the fourth option may be to have the vendor remove the gate so that the access becomes a moot point. No gate - no access required. This supposes that the access to the garage from the rear garden is not essential. You could always reinstate the gate at a later date if desired.

The problem I’ve come across in recent years is that lenders don’t have in-house legal teams. Unlike the large High Street lenders who do. They rely solely on advice from solicitors who are conveyancing for the buyer or owner and also representing the bank and as such these solicitors will NOT take a common sense view on things because they’ll be risking liability to the banks. An in-house legal team actually work for the bank and they WILL take a view on niggly little things which don’t pose any real threat to the banks security.

Good luck, I hope you can resolve this. We had to get the farmer who owns the bottom of our access road to sign a document giving us access to our house when we bought it as there wasn’t a right of way in writing (despite it being historically used since the property was built over 100 years ago & being the ONLY access road) fortunately he didn’t cause us any problems and was happy to sign it.

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Reply to the comment left by Kate Mellor at 01/11/2018 - 13:44
We had a similar issue with our purchase and although it took time being batted back n forth, it was eventually resolved by ascertaining there had been ‘an assumed and regular right of access’ for the previous x years since the house was built. In this case it was 24 yrs but the figure needed was less than that. I might add that this was in relation to a legal right to access the property from its pedestrian and vehicle gates BOTH of which are in a private (non adopted) lane and no other method of entry exists. Hope you get this sorted.