A North Derbyshire woman has been made to reposition her garden fence after a drawn-out legal dispute with her neighbours.
Alison Bolsover moved into her home in Chesterfield in 1990 and removed the fence from the garden, which she then replaced 13 years later.
However, the alignment of the new fence was disputed by property developers Bruce and Irene Melville, who own the land bordering the garden.
The couple first launched legal action against Ms Bolsover in 2012, when they argued that the new fence did not follow the previous layout and that their neighbour had essentially doubled the size of her garden through taking their land.
While Ms Bolsover agreed that the new fence had resulted in a “small amount of encroachment” on her neighbours’ property, she argued that their claim – that she had taken a 20 foot by 90 foot piece of their garden – was inaccurate.
Judge Hefin Rees QC decided that Mr and Mrs Melville owned all of the land being disputed.
Ms Bolsover’s claim, that the disputed areas had been part of her garden for so long that she had squatters’ rights over them, was also rejected.
She was ordered to relocate her summer house to a portion of the garden that she legally owned.
Ms Bolsover was also ordered to move any of her possessions from the land belonging to her neighbours.
Fighting on his client’s behalf to overturn the decision at London’s Court of Appeal, Ms Bolsover’s barrister presented photographic and written evidence that had been provided by the previous owner of the property, which showed the original garden to be a similar shape to the one formed by the new fence.
However, Lord Justice Longmore said that Judge Rees’s original decision was reached after boundary lines on land registry documents, and physical evidence at the site, had been fully assessed, and that the appeal would not be granted.