A church warden and his wife can only walk down one side of their home on two Wednesdays of the month following a boundary dispute.

Pensioners Ray and Bronwen Sadler, of Station Road, Headcorn, are £70,000 worse off after a protracted dispute with a neighbour.

It has also left them with the “ridiculous” situation that they can only walk down one side of their former Methodist manse on the first and third Wednesday of each month between 2pm and 4pm.

Although they went to court as the claimants, spending thousands on barristers, solicitors and surveyors, they were unable to claw back any costs.

The problem arose four years ago when they got into dispute with next-door-neighbour Terry Ann Standen about their boundaries, including a hedge which had overgrown the hard standing for her car, access to one side of the Sadlers’ home and a fence which Mrs Standen put up.

Mr Sadler said: “It seems wrong that there is no affordable system for resolving these disputes without these huge expenses and the full panoply of the law.

“There should be a better and cheaper system for resolving such disputes without the need to go to law; the law should be a last resort and should embody sanctions against the party who refuses mediation by other means.

“Legal costs today are quite outrageous and unjustified; the law is very much a closed shop operated for the benefit of lawyers, not the public whom it pretends to serve.”

The Sadlers believed the matter could have been settled much earlier if Mrs Standen had agreed to mediation at the beginning.

Mrs Sadler said: “Once she finally agreed to a settlement, the judge did not make an order for costs on either side so we lost thousands.”

Under the settlement, the Sadlers are allowed to go onto the hard standing to cut the hedge; Mrs Standen must remove the fence she put up on the western boundary; and in a separate gentleman’s agreement, the Sadlers are allowed limited access to the side of their house accessed through the next door property.

Mrs Standen was unavailable for comment.