Legal battle over fence ‘six inches in wrong place’ costs £70,000

A millionaire property developer and his neighbours are locked in a four-year battle which has run up £70,000 in legal costs over whether a garden fence should be moved six inches.

Construction boss Patrick Doyle, 62, removed the disputed wood and panel fence in 2016 during construction of his new four-bedroom property, next door to the £1.7 million home of Janusz and Elzbieta Wajda in Ealing.

When the fence was not reinstated the couple did it themselves, insisting they had put it back in exactly the same spot. But Mr Doyle accused them of “trespassing” on to his land.

Mr Doyle, who has spent £60,000 trying to get the fence shifted, is now suing his neighbours at Central London county court, asking a judge to order them to take out the fence and put it “along the correct boundary line as originally agreed”.

Mr Wajda, 61, and his wife, 59 — who have run up £10,000 in costs — insist they have done nothing wrong and want Mr Doyle to pay for the work reinstating the fence in the first place.

The court heard Mr Doyle paid almost £1 million in 2014 for the land — a former doctor’s surgery — and the Wajdas said they were initially friendly as he set about building his new home.

However the dispute blew up when Mr Doyle needed to remove the boundary fence during construction of a garage, and 10 months passed without it being replaced.

Repeated emails were sent to Mr Doyle asking for the fence to be restored, and Mr Wajda said he eventually decided to hire workers to do it, telling the court: “My wife asked me to put it up — she didn’t like the brickwork.”

Ben Maltz, representing Mr Doyle, said the construction boss “asserts that the Wajdas have positioned the fence so as to encroach on the land, such that it sits atop a ground level drainage pipe serving his property.”

Nick Grant, for the Wajdas, insisted the fence was in the right place and the pipe had been installed over the couple’s side of the boundary. They say the fence has been “reinstated to its original position, is not a trespass and that the pipe is a trespass,” he said.

The Wajdas have lived at the property since 2002, and say they obtained a detailed survey of their home in 2009, showing clearly where the boundary lies.

Mr Wajda claimed he agreed to move the fence by 50mm while it was being erected when Mr Doyle first challenged him about its position.

Judge Nicholas Parfitt will give his ruling at a later date.

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