A couple have been ordered by a court to tear down the £80,000 extension to their London home after it was built a couple of inches over the boundary with their neighbours.
In 2019 Shabaz and Shakira Ashraf decided to tear down the old 1970s extension at the back of their Redbridge home and replace it with a modern one but they ran into trouble with their neighbours.
Living next door to the Ashrafs are Avtar and Balvinder Dhinjan who said the new extension was just a couple of inches (2.68 inches to be precise) across their property boundary and poking onto their land.
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The Ashrafs reckon they spent about £80,000 on the extension and when the Dhinjan family complained they told their neighbours to 'go to court', which they did.
The Dhinjans said that while the extension wasn't poking very far into their property they claimed it had been 'intended to annoy' them and was causing problems because with no room for air circulation outside their house was becoming damp and 'mouldy'.
They sued their neighbours at Central London County Court, demanding an injunction to force the Ashrafs to demolish the encroaching wall.
They were granted victory in the court case by Judge Richard Roberts, who slammed the Ashrafs as 'high-handed' and said they were 'trespassing' by building their extension over onto their neighbours property.
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He ordered them to knock down the offending wall and move it back.
The Ashrafs claimed they'd built their new extension over the old one and that if there was any sort of encroachment going on it must have been happening for 40 years, meaning they'd technically have squatters rights.
However, the Dhinjans legal representative Rachel Coyle told the judge that the 2019 rebuild went further than the footprint of the old extension.
"There was an encroachment which, while de minims in valuation terms, causes significant injury to the land belonging to the claimants," she argued.
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"The defendants’ continued course of conduct intended to annoy.
"Only removal and building it where it should be will prevent mould and damp, failing which the claimants' extension will become virtually uninhabitable. The injury is not one that can be compensated in money."
In his ruling the judge said it was 'sad' that before all of this extension-related drama the two families had 'lived in harmony and were on good terms'.
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He also said it was 'wholly untrue' that the extension was built in exactly the same spot as the previous one, with a surveyor concluding that the modern one had been built across the boundary.
The judge found that Mr and Mrs Ashraf 'were on notice that they would be encroaching and that there would be a trespass' in April 2019 but had carried on with construction anyway.
He said the couple had 'simply not told the truth from the very start' and 'carried on regardless' when told there would be problems with what they were doing.
In addition to their own costs the Ashrafs have been ordered to pay their neighbours legal bills, with the total cost of the court case ending up at around £200,000.
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Then of course the couple will have to foot the bill for the costs of redoing their £80,000 extension.
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