Plan B Forum

An elderly couple who cut their wealthy neighbour’s grass verge for 12 years have been given the land in ‘squatters’ rights’ following a £250,000 court battle.

The Kirkbys had moved into their home (right), The Coach House, in 1999. The untidy verge, then covered in bushes, was not legally part of their property despite being outside their door. Mr Heaney's house is pictured left, and the disputed piece of land is the grass verge outside the Kirkbys' home

Pensioners Hilary and Edward Kirkby had tended to the land outside their home for over a decade.

Mrs Kirkby, 72, claimed a right to the area despite not owning it because she said she had always cut the grass and planted flowers as if it was her own garden.

Property consultant Marcus Heaney (pictured with a female companion outside court) faces a £250,000 legal bill after trying to claim the disputed piece of land as his own - after the Court of Appeal ruled against him yesterday

But she and Mr Kirkby, 70, ended up in court when their neighbour, property consultant Marcus Heaney, registered the verge as his own after removing a fence in February 2012.

The Court of Appeal ruled against Mr Heaney yesterday and he now faces an estimated £250,000 bill following the marathon legal battle.

The Kirkbys had moved into their home, The Coach House, in 1999. The untidy verge, then covered in bushes, was not legally part of their property despite being outside their door.

The couple set about beautifying the plot and installing two car parking spaces. After bringing in 12 tons of topsoil, they seeded the verge with grass and put in place a coping stone with ‘The Coach House’ carved on it.

But Mr Heaney, 50, who owns The Woodshed home on the other side of the narrow lane, acquired a ‘paper title’ to ownership of the verge in 2012 and immediately ordered the couple ‘to make no further use of it, whether for parking or otherwise’.

Mrs Kirkby responded in April the same year by applying to have the verge transferred into her name. The case went before the First-Tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal in 2014 and 2015, culminating in a ruling that Mrs Kirkby was the owner by ‘adverse possession’ – better known as squatters’ rights.

Now the Court of Appeal has agreed Mrs Kirkby does own the land in Thorp Arch, near Wetherby, Yorkshire.

The ruling was based on the fact she could prove she used it as if it was hers for 12 years, the court heard. Mr Heaney’s barrister John Randall QC, had argued Mrs Kirkby came nowhere near proving that she treated the land as if she had a right to it – a necessary condition for squatters’ rights.

Mr Randall said that planting flowers there, cutting grass and putting out boundary stones to stop delivery trucks driving over it was simply ‘good neighbourliness’.

But Lord Justice Sales rejected the appeal bid yesterday.

The judge said: ‘It cannot properly be said that the appeal would raise an important point of principle or practice.’

Mr Heaney and Mrs Kirkby both refused to comment outside court following the hearing.



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