A pensioner evicted from her home after a petty neighbour dispute over a foot of land turned into a five-year legal battle said she plans to leave the ‘toxic’ neighbourhood.
Jenny Field, 77, was forced to live in a hostel after bailiffs evicted her from her £420,000 bungalow following a court battle with neighbour Pauline Clark.
Mrs Clark erected a new boundary fence between their two properties in 2020 which Ms Field said had moved 12in into her land.
She hired contractors to remove and reposition the 6ft fence, after which Mrs Clark took the matter to court and won.
Ms Field was ordered to cover the cost of the fence she took down and two thirds of Mrs Clark’s legal fees, about £21,000 at the time.
But Ms Field refused to accept the outcome and the case went back to court multiple times, sending the legal bill skyrocketing to £113,000.
In September a judge told Ms Field she must sell her bungalow, which is part of a cul-de-sac in a suburb of Poole, Dorset, to pay her neighbour’s legal fees.
She failed to sell the bungalow and bailiffs went in on January 26, repossessing the home and forcing Ms Field to leave with only a few bags of belongings and her mobile phone.
All her possessions must be removed from the bungalow, which she bought in 2016, in less than two weeks so it can be listed for sale.
After paying Mrs Clark’s legal fees, Ms Field will have around £300,000 to buy a new home.
She said: ‘I should have taken the chance to move out ages ago but I stayed in the area and modernised my property. I made it really nice.’
Mrs Clark was ‘jealous’ according to Ms Field, who said she wanted to ‘move right out of the area completely’.
‘My children have told me to get out of the area as it’s toxic,’ she said.
It will be five weeks before the local council can assess Ms Field for temporary accommodation and she will stay in the hostel until then.
She said she has been allowed back into her home to collect some clothes and other belongings but added she was ‘vulnerable’.
‘I am stressed out, completely stressed out. They’ve decided that I have lost the case but they want £113,000. It’s been absolutely ridiculous.’
Last September a judge at Bournemouth County Court dismissed Ms Field’s final appeal in the case after she tried to claim Mrs Clark’s case had been fraudulent.
Judge Ross Fentem dismissed the claim as ‘totally without merit’.
He said the ‘draconian order’ to repossess her home was a last resort but that Ms Field had every opportunity to pay.
Mrs Clark’s solicitor Anna Curtis said there was ample equity in Ms Field’s property for her to pay the debt and still be able to buy a comfortable mortgage-free retirement property with cash left over.
Passing his judgement at Bournemouth County Court last September, Judge Fentem said: ‘This is a very long-running boundary dispute. The defendant [Ms Field] has, in various ways, sought to relitigate the original case.
‘Her case is fundamentally that… the original fence was a boundary fence and that it was entirely on her land.
‘Every attempt to relitigate has failed. She appears to be convinced some form of fraud has taken place. There appears to be no reasoned basis for the allegation.
‘There is no evidence in the documentation any wrongdoing was committed.
‘I have no confidence at all the claimant [Mrs Clark] will be paid what she is owed except by an order for sale.
‘This matter needs resolution, the parties need to find a way of putting the entirety of this dispute behind them.
‘The order for sale is a last resort and draconian remedy but taking all the factors into account I should make an order for sale in this case.’
