Access to neighbouring property act.

[JK0]

Legally you have right off access to undertake maintenance of your property, so surely the sand would apply to plants.

I don't think putting sand on the Ivy will help.

[JK0]

BTW, surely if o/p goes and snips all the stems at ground level, the ivy will die off in due course?

[Plumbob]

Exactly. I will try to put a picture of the wall up.

[Mrs Mug]

BTW, surely if o/p goes and snips all the stems at ground level, the ivy will die off in due course?

We did this at our house. Cut through the stems at the bottom of the wall, the ivy dies off but remains clinging to the wall. So the neighbour can still have her view of ivy.

[JK0]

We did this at our house. Cut through the stems at the bottom of the wall, the ivy dies off but remains clinging to the wall. So the neighbour can still have her view of ivy.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. She'll be begging o/p to come over & remove it then.

[Turbine Terry]

I don’t understand why this is even an issue, let alone spending costs on solicitor fee’s and contemplating courts orders.

As I understand it the OP owns the ivy and he owns the wall it is growing up. The OP has a 500 mm pathway to gain access to the ivy and also has access to his roof. 500 mm is plenty to shuffle down to cut down the ivy, and/or use weed killer (if easier/needed you can get weed killer pump containers with a fairly powerful spray rod to use from a distance). Even if 500 mm wasn’t enough a suitable tradesman with a roof ladder could use weed killer (with a spray rod from the roof downwards).

[jpkeates]

My guess is that the issue is a) removing the dead ivy and b) fixing the damaged brickwork.

Ivy is relatively easy to kill, but it usually stays in place when it's dead.
It usually turns brown, which isn't that unattractive (to me), but it doesn't move.

And if the reason it needs removing is because it's damaged the bricks and mortar (or roof tiles or guttering), which is usually why people remove it, that damage will need to be fixed.
That's usually why people remove ivy, which is normally quite attractive.

The neighbour might be swayed by the realisation that a dispute or court order will have to be disclosed when their property is sold, which would definitely affect the price.
The OP would have to disclose the ivy issue, so they're already in that position, so they're not going to have the same negative consequence.
So it's really in the neighbours interest to allow access.
They may not see it that way, and, given the OP's issue with them not being a man, I imagine that a non-legal solution is probably impossible.