Guides

Read before you raise it

Three guides to the parts of a neighbour dispute that are easiest to get wrong. Each one is written from the official sources and shows you where to check them yourself.

General information, not legal advice. This page sets out how the law generally applies. It does not take account of your circumstances, and you should get advice about your own situation before acting on it. The official sources this page is written from are listed on it; where they differ from anything here, they are the authority.

Neighbour disputes go wrong in predictable ways. Somebody builds a fence before anything is agreed. Somebody cuts a tree they were not permitted to touch. Somebody follows advice about free mediation that was correct two years ago and is not correct now. Each guide below takes one of those and sets out what actually applies.

They are general information rather than advice about your situation. If you want the law on a particular kind of dispute instead, the pages on dividing fences, trees and branches, boundaries and the rest set it out by topic, and how we work explains what a consultation involves.

Before you do anything irreversible

Both of these are about the step people take first and regret afterwards: building, or cutting.

How to raise a fence problem with your neighbour

For anyone whose dividing fence needs replacing and who has not yet had the conversation, or has had it badly. It covers what to work out before you knock on the door, why a written note the same day matters, and what a fencing notice does when talking has not worked.

Overhanging branches: what you may and may not do

For anyone about to cut back a neighbour’s tree. It explains why the familiar rule about cutting anything over your boundary is not safe to act on in New South Wales, what council tree protection means for you, and when a matter belongs in the Land and Environment Court instead.

If you are trying to settle it

The routes to free mediation in New South Wales changed in 2025, and a lot of what is still published about them is out of date.

Mediation in a neighbour dispute

For anyone who has been told to ring a Community Justice Centre. It sets out what changed on 1 July 2025, which free routes are still open and for which kinds of dispute, what a mediation is actually like, and how to record an agreement so that it holds.

What these guides are

Each guide describes how one part of the system generally works. It is not advice about your dispute and it cannot be, because neighbour matters turn on facts a web page does not know: where your boundary actually runs, what your council’s rules say about that particular tree, what the by-laws for your scheme provide, and what has already passed between you and the person next door.

You will not find a fee, an outcome, a success rate or a promise in any of them. What you will find is the mechanism, and a link to the official page that carries the current detail.

Every guide lists the official sources it was written from. Where a source and a guide disagree, the source is right, and we would be glad to be told so the guide can be corrected.

Neighbour law in New South Wales is spread across several Acts

There is no single neighbours Act. Which statute applies depends on what the dispute is about, and so does which court or tribunal decides it. That is the most common reason people lose time: an application lodged in the wrong forum is not a small error.

Fences sit in the Dividing Fences Act 1991 (NSW), and those matters go to NCAT or the Local Court. Trees and hedges sit in the Trees (Disputes Between Neighbours) Act 2006 (NSW), and those go to the Land and Environment Court. Strata sits in the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW), with a mediation step through NSW Fair Trading before NCAT. Easements sit in the Conveyancing Act 1919 (NSW). Dogs and cats sit in the Companion Animals Act 1998 (NSW) and are dealt with by your local council. Noise has a route through the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 (NSW), and nuisance is a claim at common law.

It is worth establishing which of those your problem is before anything else. Quite often it is two of them at once, and they run separately.

How to tell whether something has changed

Before you rely on anything written here, check it where it is authoritative. These five between them cover nearly everything in these guides, and where one of them no longer matches what a guide says, follow the source.

NSW legislation, for the Acts themselves. The in-force version of the Dividing Fences Act 1991 and the Trees (Disputes Between Neighbours) Act 2006 shows the date the text was current to.
NCAT, for fences, strata and other housing and property matters: what it can order, what has to happen before you apply, and what it costs. Start at housing and property.
The Land and Environment Court, for anything about a tree or a hedge. Its trees and hedges pages set out who may apply and what the Court expects you to have done first.
NSW Fair Trading, for strata mediation, and the NSW Government's strata disputes page for the order the steps come in.
Your local council, for anything about a tree, an animal or what may be built. Council rules are local by design, so no general page can tell you what yours provides. One phone call answers it.

Worth having beside you

The guides are easier to use with your own papers to hand. In most neighbour disputes it is the documents and the dates that decide what you can do.

Your title documents and the registered plan for the land
Photographs of the fence, tree, wall or structure in dispute, with dates
Any notice served by either of you, and the date it was served
Any quote you have obtained, and what it covers
A record of what has passed between you and your neighbour
For strata, the registered by-laws for your own scheme