A judge ordered Shabaz Ashraf, 45, and his wife Shakira, 40, to tear down the £700,000 addition to their London home because it was built just two inches too close to their neighbors’ house. A couple who built an £80,000 addition to their neighbors’ garden and told them to “go to court” were ordered to demolish it and paid £200,000 in legal fees.
The couple estimates they spent £80,000 tearing down a 1970s extension to the rear of their house and replacing it only because next-door neighbors, Avtar and Balvinder Dhinjan, complain it was millimeters off the mark. Mr. and Mrs. Dhinjan said the new extension deflected 2.68 inches toward their lot with a 3.86-inch roof overhang on the wrong side of the line.
The couple was told to demolish the £80,000 extension after encroaching 68mm into the neighbor’s garden
Mr. Dhinjan claimed that his neighbors “intended to disturb” him and his family by building on the border between their houses in 2019. While they admitted that the “encroachment” on their border is very small, the Dhinjans complained that the extension of their neighbors is making their own house. damp and ‘musty’ because it is so close to your wall that it leaves no room for outside air to circulate.
They sued in Central London County Court, demanding an injunction compelling the Ashrafs to demolish the encroaching wall. A judge criticized the “arrogant” neighbors for “entering without authorization” and ordered them to tear down the offending wall.
Mr. and Mrs. Ashraf had argued the case, saying they built the new extension on the footprint of the 1970s one and that any encroachment must have been going on for more than 40 years, giving them squatter rights. illegal.
But Rachel Coyle, for the Dhinjans, told the judge the 2019 rebuild went beyond the footprint of the old extension and as a result, she was “flush” against the outside wall of her house.
“There was an invasion that, although it is minimal in terms of valuation, causes significant damage to the land that belongs to the plaintiffs,” argued her lawyer. The ‘defendants’ continued course of conduct was intended to annoy.
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‘Only removing it and building it where it needs to be will prevent mold and moisture, otherwise, the plaintiffs’ tract will become virtually uninhabitable. “The injury cannot be compensated with money,” she said.
The judge said: ‘One of the sad features of the case is that before the parties began building new extensions to the rear of their property, they lived in harmony and were on good terms. ‘The defendants say they built the wall in exactly the same position as the previous wall, which was in position for 41 years. I consider that to the best of the defendants’ knowledge, totally untrue.
‘The joint expert surveyor concluded in his report that there was a 68mm invasion. ‘I can see from the images that the breeze blocks were built outside the existing boundary, so the idea that they were built inside the existing boundary line is not tenable because the images show where the existing boundary line is. Your new wall is clearly outside that wall.
‘The wall put up by the defendants is encroaching on the plaintiffs’ land.
‘The plaintiffs raise their case for injunctive relief on this basis. They say this is a case where the defendants acted high-handedly throughout and deliberately overruled the plaintiffs when they said there was an encroachment on their land.’
The judge found that, in April 2019, Mr. and Ms. Ashraf ‘were warned that they would be trespassing and that there would be trespassing’, but they continued with their project regardless.
He discovered that Ms. Ashraf had told her neighbors during a dispute over the issue: “If you think we’ve come, go to court.” The judge also told the Ashrafs to make a statement that the fence between the two houses belongs to the Dhinjans.
In addition to paying his own costs, he ordered Mr. and Mrs. Ashraf to pay their neighbors’ solicitors’ bills, estimated at almost £100,000, with £49,009 upfront. The total cost of the case was estimated by lawyers out of court at around £200,000, on top of which Mr. and Mrs. Ashraf will face the costs of dismantling and rebuilding their extension.
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