Neighbour to pay £750 after turning his garden into a junkyard

Updated
Roy Harrison
Roy Harrison



Roy Harrison, a 56-year old from Cheadle Hulme in Greater Manchester, has been fined after amassing a huge pile of old fridges, washing machines, and electrical goods in his garden. The junk pile got so big that neighbours of his £130,000 semi-detached home complained - and as he had been in trouble for the same thing before, he faced a fine.

Harrison collected broken electrical items, and used parts from them in order to fix other broken machines. He first started filling his garden with junk in 2009, at which point he was served with a planning enforcement notice by the council and made to clean up.

However, soon afterwards, the pile began to grow again, and the Mirror reported that it became big enough to be seen on Google Earth satellite images from space.

He was fined £250 and made to pay £500 costs at Stockport Magistrates Court. He told the Mirror he had originally been mending the items in a unit elsewhere, but after he lost his job, he moved it into his garden. He never got round to moving again - and now he has paid the price. He added that he had found somewhere else to store the items now.

The Mail quoted Stockport Council member Patrick McAuley, who said: "'Mr. Harrison in effect decided to use his house as a scrap yard with no regard whatsoever for his neighbours. He then compounded this by failing to comply with an enforcement notice served by the council."
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Neighbour nightmares

It's just one of a flurry of neighbour issues that have already hit the courts in 2015, which go to show how far things can go when you fall out with a neighbour, and raise the question of whether this year is going to be a record-breaker for neighbour disputes.

In the middle of January, two Welsh neighbours in their 80s were convicted of causing criminal damage, after cutting down a 45-foot wide clematis bush that was in another neighbour's back garden. They were given a conditional discharge, but made to pay £786 in costs and compensation, after magistrates ruled that they had cut down the bush - which was partly clinging to a trellis in one of their gardens.

A week later, a 78-year-old man was given a two-year conditional discharge after pleading guilty to damaging his neighbour's fence. The Wirral man showed up on his neighbour's doorstep demanding he take down pieces of willow he was attaching to his side of the fence in the front garden - as it was scruffy. His neighbour refused, and explained it would only be there for a few weeks to support some Christmas lights. He was later seen removing the willow with a hammer, and was made to pay £85 costs for the damage. The magistrate told him to stay out of trouble, as 'life's too short'.

At the end of January, a woman from Reddish in Stockport was convicted of assault, for throwing water out of an upstairs window that splashed on her neighbour's children. The two households had been in dispute over the noise the children made when playing in the garden. She threw water out of an upstairs window, and despite arguing that she was just emptying a cat bowl, she was found guilty. She was given a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £280 costs.

Then at the beginning of this month, the Scottish Government settled a neighbour dispute that had run for 18 years. One man had allowed his fir trees to grow 20 metres high, which his neighbours said blocked their light and caused moss to grow on their roof. The tree fan had already felled a number of firs to appease his neighbours, but drew the line at the last two. The government ruled that there was enough light coming through the gap in the trees and they should be allowed to stand. The neighbours said they had spent thousands of pounds on the battle over the years.

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