A council has been ordered to pay £30,000 to a retired magistrate after accusing him of stealing part of his own garden.
Christopher Pinto was accused of carrying out a land grab by changing his back garden boundaries to encroach on a neighbouring nature reserve.
Haringey Council subjected the 77-year-old man to repeated legal threats over the around 460 square-foot piece of land at the bottom of his garden in Highgate, north London.
But a tribunal has found in Mr Pinto’s favour, ordering the Labour-controlled authority to pay him £32,000 in costs.
Speaking after the ruling, the former magistrate said: "It’s been hell. Haringey made outlandish statements without producing a shred of evidence to me or the court."
Sitting at the Land Registration tribunal in central London, Judge Roger Cohen ordered the authority to cough up but it failed to pay on time, forcing Mr Pinto to seek a further court judgment.
It has since forked out, blaming the delay on “an administrative error”, but the cost to taxpayers of Haringey Council’s own legal fees is yet to be calculated, it said.
A conservation group set up to look after the woodland now says it raised concerns over the council’s pursuit of Mr Pinto, but was assured the council was in the right.
Mr Pinto bought his home that is a 10-minute walk from Highgate tube station and backs onto the Parkland Walk nature reserve in 2004.
Parkland Walk is a 4.5-mile nature walk along the former railway line between Alexandra Palace and Finsbury Park and is London's 'longest local nature reserve', Haringey Council said.
In 2012, the Friends of Parkland Walk (FPW) said it carried out a boundary review with Haringey Council, in which a concern was raised about the position of Mr Pinto’s back garden fence.
But he was not contacted by the authority until 2016, when he was told of the possible encroachment.
A year later the council became more forceful, telling him he was “unlawfully occupying” 42.5sq m of the nature reserve and if he did not “vacate” it, he would be taken to court, where the council would seek “damages and costs”.
Land Registry documents showed the garden boundary was indeed different to the boundaries on the deeds, but Mr Pinto described the area at issue as “a tiny wedge of land at the bottom of my garden”.
Mr Pinto took Haringey to a tribunal, arguing the land was rightfully his under “adverse possession” rules, under which occupants can seek ownership of land occupied for at least 12 years without challenge.
The council countered that Mr Pinto had not only stolen the land, but had tried to hide it by erecting a tall fence, describing it as a “deliberate and premeditated land grab”.
But a contractor who worked on the garden shortly after Mr Pinto moved in gave evidence that he simply built a new fence in place of the old one.
Mr Pinto also produced a legal form signed by the previous owner in 2004, stating that the boundary had not changed for at least 20 years.
He branded the council “dishonest, inefficient and uncaring” after it subjected him to years of legal threats, then failed to pay up after he won his case.
Mr Pinto continued: “They (the council) don’t care about what they are putting people through. It was a huge emotional stress, very time-consuming and a great expense.
“I replaced the old fence, but in exactly the same place. The boundary clearly had changed at some point, but not by me and not by the owner before me either, as stated in his legal document.”
At the hearing, Judge Cohen found there was “nothing” to support the council’s claims that Mr Pinto had stolen the land or tried to conceal it - claims which had “put his integrity in issue”.
He said Mr Pinto’s belief that he owned the land was “inherently credible and backed up by documentation” and he declared Mr Pinto the rightful owner.
Friends of Parkland Walk said its members “voiced their concern that public resources would be expended on the case” and “sought assurances” that it was “a good case”.
A spokesman for FPW said: “Council officers and the legal department indicated it was confident in its lawful position.”
The group was therefore disappointed by the outcome, adding: “Whether lawfully or unlawfully, Mr Pinto has acquired, at no cost to himself and for his personal use or benefit, a portion of a nature reserve that belonged to Haringey and therefore to its residents.”
Mr Pinto said the legal process had in fact cost him “an awful lot of money”, not all of which was recouped by the court’s costs order. He said he was still over £10,000 out of pocket.
But Haringey Council stood by its decision-making and was "disappointed" by the outcome.
A spokesman for the authority said: “We defended this case at the tribunal as we believed that we had a good case, backed up by witness testimony and photographic evidence.
“While we were disappointed with the decision of the tribunal, we nonetheless accept the outcome.”
It added: “Parkland Walk is a unique green space which gives residents unparalleled access to nature right in the heart of London.
"We take our role as custodians of this space extremely seriously. That includes acting to prevent encroachment from neighbouring properties, which is in line with our legal obligations to protect the integrity of the nature reserve."
