'£17,000 payout not enough - we paid £500k to fix damage from neighbour's cypress hedge'

 
Pavan Amara10 September 2013

A couple awarded £17,000 compensation after a neighbour’s hedge damaged the foundations of their home today branded the sum an “insult” claiming they paid nearly £500,000 to save their home.

Saqib and Shazia Khan claim their neighbour’s row of Lawson Cypress trees devastated their gated six-bedroom house in Stanmore, northwest London.

They say the damage caused by the tree roots caused an entire floor of their home to collapse forcing them to move into a “dingy” two-bedroom flat with their three young children while the damage was repaired.

Broken pipes: Damage at the couple's Stanmore home

Now, following last week’s successful High Court bid, the couple have been awarded £17,269 for the cost of expert advice, surveys, remedial work and for the “distress and inconvenience” caused by the tree roots damage.

Mr Khan, a chartered accountant, said the money is not enough to compensate for what his family has been through.

He told the Standard: “Most of it will go to the insurance company, I will receive little over £1,000, which is less than I make in a week. The problem started in 2006 after five years living here.

“It got so bad that one day a visitor walked through our front door and fell in a metre deep hole that had been dug to get to the tree’s root. The kid’s clothes were always wet and smelling, we couldn’t shower any more because the bathroom had fallen through, so we were forced out into a tiny flat for a year.

“The insurance company paid some money, but I had to pay £450,000 to sort the problem completely and then rebuild my house. A few thousand doesn’t even begin to cover it, it’s an insult.”

But neighbour Helen Kane, whose insurance company will pay the sum, told the Standard she had refused to remove the 30-year-old trees because they were planted by her late husband.

“I couldn’t get rid [of them]. I’m too sentimental. I’m still hurt the trees are gone and I’ve sold the house now. I’d rather be away from the whole situation. I don’t need the bother at my age, I wasn’t trying to be spiteful or horrible by not removing them, I couldn’t bring myself to do it,” Mrs Kane said.

The Khans first noticed cracks in their property in September 2006. The damage was to their parquet floor and to the right hand side of their house, including the sitting room and rear extension.

The following year a tree expert pinpointed the Cypress hedge as having “the potential to be a significant factor in the current damage”, the High Court heard.

Mr Justice Ramsey said expert evidence established that the Cypress trees had caused damage to the Khans’ home and that a “reasonably prudent landowner” would have appreciated the real risk of subsidence damage posed by it.

It would have cost Mrs Kane just £700 to £800 to remove the offending trees, the court was told.

The judge said: “I find [Mrs Kane] failed to take the appropriate steps to eliminate the risk of subsidence damage caused by the roots, and is therefore liable in nuisance for the damage caused by her failure to eliminate that risk.”

However, he ruled that damage caused by a 50-year-old oak tree on Mrs Kane’s land had not been reasonably foreseeable and lopped 15 percent off the Khans’ compensation because they delayed in complaining to their neighbour.

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