Our neighbour has neglected his garden entirely, bramble has FILLED his garden! It is pushing our fence over. It has damaged/broken our fence once last year, we complained in writing, he ignored. We

There is a piece of land which backs onto our front garden fence. This belongs to a property on Mountsorrel Lane in Sileby. Unfortunately the way the land the properties relate on this particular road is unusual in that the land is NOT immediately behind the house. In fact, this particular property owner will have to come out of his house, along the pavement, down a alley, past two other properties to enter his piece of land. Consequently he ignores it and it has become overgrown to such and extent most of the garden is covered in bramble. Last year it broke our fence. We took the fence down and trimmed back the bramble by about 6 foot. We did not know who the land belonged to. We then had the person rented the property knocking on our door accusing us of criminal damage! After a reasonably long conversation he agreed that we could continue cutting back the bramble and tend to the land and make good and use for our own purpose. He was not certain it was his land at this point. Two days later, after cutting back more bramble and taking it to the local skip in our car at our expense, he put back his piece of fence, which was the original iron fencing from many years ago and made it clear we were not to continue. I wrote to him and the owner of the property whose details I got by paying for a search offering to either purchase the land, use the land and keep it tidy with his permission or requesting that he puts the land in good condition so that not further damage occurs to our property. I received no reply but I do know the letters arrived as I sent them recorded to be signed for. There is now a very large tree which has shot up from a seed and is situated between our fence and his and is pushing the fence over. I have approached the county council but they say they cannot help us unless we can prove there is a health hazard! There is a corpse of a cat on the other side of our fence which has landed in the bramble and it is obvious by the way it is laying that it died due to not being able to free itself on a very cold winters night. We are left with no further options and short of pouring weed killer over the fence, which may in turn damage all our plants in that area of our garden we are at a loss as to how to tackle this problem. Unfortunately it is not managed by an agent, so I don't have that avenue to travel either. Any help or suggestions as to what to do would be very gratefully received.