Published: 14/02/2023 By Bethany-Elouise Pankhurst

The tangled world of knotweed litigation is even denser now that a home owner has been allowed to be claim compensation after the ‘pernicious’ plant spread from an adjacent cycle track owned by his neighbour – a local authority – to his garden.
The problems at the terraced house owned by landlord Marc Davies date back to 2013 when the weed was first logged as a problem.
But it was only until recently that it came to a head at court, with a District Judge saying he could not recover the £4,900 he sought for the ‘blight’ to his property.

This was overturned, concluding that although work had been completed to remove knotweed from the site ‘as best as it can be’, there had been a ‘residual’ diminution in value of the property, also called ‘blight’ to the value claimed.

The decision also highlights the huge problems that knotweed presents – namely that once land has been contaminated by the plant and its rhizomes, the remedial measures needed to make any alterations to that land including in this case just gardening in it, can cause huge disturbance and cost.