After losing a long legal battle with their neighbor over a loft conversion built too near to their £1.5 million property, a rich hipster couple is facing a £130,000 cost.
The roof expansion at Debbie Ranford’s posh East Dulwich, London, apartment that she erected back in 2014 led Liz Peck, the owner of the gender-neutral organic children’s clothing brand “Our Little Tribe,” and her musician husband Adam to file a lawsuit.
The Pecks claimed that Mrs Ranford’s extension was only about one inch away from their own loft space, and that her constructor then joined the two dormers by inserting “infill” material on the Pecks’ side of the boundary.
When the Pecks bought the house in 2010, the loft space was already in existence.
Last month, the fashionable couple filed a lawsuit in Central London County Court against their banker neighbor, who had previously been a family friend, requesting that she destroy the loft extension.
Mrs Ranford’s lawyer, Howard Smith, claimed she badly wanted to avoid the ‘enormous costs’ of a trial and had offered her neighbors £13,000 to settle the case previously, but it had been turned down.
Despite finding a “very small” trespass, a judge refused to order demolition, and the Pecks have now been compelled to pay lawyers’ fees of about £130,000 for the legal battle.
The Pecks should not have pushed the case to a full county court trial, according to Judge Simon Monty QC, who agreed that they had tried to use a “sledgehammer to break a nut” over a small boundary dispute.
Mrs Ranford, a banker, created the loft space in her two-story property in posh Bellenden Road, south London, in 2014 with the approval of her neighbors, Mr and Mrs Peck, the court heard during the trial.
Mrs Ranford, who works in regulatory reporting for a City bank, had her neighbors sign a Party Wall Notice authorizing the construction.
Mrs Peck, on the other hand, told the court that she was shocked to find that Mrs Ranford’s builder had built on the boundary line and encroached onto their property to link the dormers in order to acquire a bigger loft room.
The 49-year-old testified before Judge Monty that the work they agreed to should have stopped short of the property line between the two houses.
Mrs Ranford’s room was to be positioned to leave a gap between the two properties to allow for maintenance. Their own loft conversion was just under an inch back from the party wall, and they understood Mrs Ranford’s room was to be positioned to leave a gap between the two properties to allow for maintenance.
Mrs Peck first saw it had been connected to hers when a roofer was checking the source of a leak and shouted down that her neighbor had built onto and over the boundary, she claimed.
Mrs Peck told the judge, ‘We had no knowledge that next door had built up and onto our land.’
‘You have to be right at the end of our garden to see that.’
‘We had no reason to check on the construction because of the party wall notice we had signed.’
‘It was quite a shock to realize and learn that something entirely different had been developed,’ her husband Adam Peck added.
Mrs Ranford chose not to create a gap between the two additions because she did not want a smaller loft space, according to lawyer Richard Egleton, who represents the couple.
Instead of leaving a gap, the builder had extended the party wall upwards to serve as the outside wall of Mrs Ranford’s loft room, with the space between the two dormers on the Pecks’ side being filled with material to keep the rain out.
The barrister contended that the work was a “clear trespass,” and that Mrs Ranford should be forced to demolish the dormer.
Mrs Ranford opposed her neighbors’ case, stating that the Pecks agreed to her building on top of the shared party wall, and that the work she did to unite the rooms was ‘unavoidable.’
Giving judgment, Judge Monty agreed that the case should have been settled and that Mrs Ranford had ultimately won because there was never any hope that a judge would order demolition of a well-built extension because of a minor trespass.
‘Although there was a minor trespass, the extension was properly constructed, it had not caused any damage and it had building regulation consent and planning permission,’ he said.
‘It was never going to be appropriate to order its demolition. It is crystal clear to me that Mrs Ranford was the successful party here.
‘I don’t see how Mr and Mrs Peck could properly be said to be the successful parties.’
He said the offer to settle the dispute without a court fight had been ‘very generous’ given that he had found the trespass was worth only £200.
‘This was a very minor trespass indeed and it deserved no more than minor damages,’ he said.
He ordered that the Pecks pay their own costs of £70,000, plus 80 per cent of their neighbour’s costs, which were estimated before the trial at about £72,000 but could be increased as they will now be assessed on the stricter ‘indemnity’ basis.
In total, the Pecks’ final bill is likely to be more than £130,000.
According to her company’s website, Mrs Peck’s label Our Little Tribe is ‘inspired by a world according to kids’.
The website states: ‘Our little tribe is a brand of organic gender neutral clothing for kids aged 3-12 years.
‘Our collections embrace simple fresh abstract graphic pattern across garment shapes with a sprinkling of ‘quirk’.
‘Each collection’s pattern is inspired by children’s moment of discovery of the world around them.
‘At the heart of what we do is a belief that we want our children to inherit a better world.
‘We believe in conscious fashion – collections are designed to transcend siblings and friends which is why we chose gender neutral colours and styles.’
Her husband Adam Peck is lead vocalist of his group Peck, which he formed during Covid.
He describes their first album online as ‘song writing unearthed during lockdown and formed in late 2021’.
‘Peck are a rock and roll band from Peckham and Norwich, writing anthemic, beat driven songs inspired by the Britpop scene of the 90s / noughties,’ he adds.