Football club boss in £100k court battle to save ‘man cave’

A football club president is embroiled in a £100,000 court fight with his neighbour after constructing an "eyesore man cave" in his suburban garden.

Justin Salmon is in dispute with Andrianna Neophytou over a 7.3m "den" – with carpet, furniture and a bar – at the bottom of his garden in Surrey.

Mr Salmon, who is president of Sutton Common Rovers FC, built the garden room in 2018 to create extra living space, but was forced to alter it after a neighbour complained.

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Mrs Neophytou, who is the freeholder of the Salmons' ground-level maisonette, as well as Mr Salmon and his wife Karen's upstairs neighbour, had secured a tribunal ruling that the "man cave" was in breach of their lease and exceeded their permission for a pergola and toolshed.

Mr Salmon then converted the room into an open-sided outdoor bar, swapping his "Man Cave" sign for one reading "Shed for Domestic Purposes".

However, Mrs Neophytou is now suing him, arguing that work he did to comply with the lease did not go far enough.

In a case that lawyers predict will run up legal bills of more than £100,000, she is demanding that the Salmons demolish the structures. The couple deny they are in breach of the lease, claiming the structures amount to no more than a normal garden shed and pergola.

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Judge Nicholas Parfitt, sitting at Mayors and City County Court in central London, was told Mr Salmon lived in a maisonette with his wife, and Mrs Neophytou lived above them.

As freeholder, Mrs Neophytou, whose garden is behind the Salmons', had granted Mr Salmon permission to build a pergola after his request in 2017.

Having erected it, Mr Salmon built a shed alongside it, and developed the structures into a roofed garden room, with UPVC windows and doors, plastered walls, carpeted floors and furniture.

Mrs Neophytou told the judge the neighbours fell out badly in 2020, after which she brought First-tier Tribunal proceedings, arguing that the "eyesore" structures were in breach of the Salmons' lease.

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She said from the witness box: "When I looked out the back, I had that great big room and marquees and everything else. There was nothing pleasurable about looking out of my windows and that did upset me."

After the tribunal found that the structures had been in breach of the lease, Mr Salmon said he would do work on the "den" to make it comply, and turned it into an open garden bar.

However, Mrs Neophytou said the work had not been enough, telling Judge Parfitt: "It doesn't look like a pergola or a shed now. It's all one long structure. It's an eyesore."

Dilan Deeljur, her barrister, said that a clause in the Salmons' lease prohibited them from having any additional building on the land without written permission, save for a shed for domestic purposes.

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He said: "She did not agree to a solid roofed, enclosed, extended, fence-supported or garden-room structure. Nor did she grant any written licence. That distinction matters.

"The defendants say that the left-hand structure is now a pergola-type structure with a roof, and that the right-hand structure is now a domestic shed.

"The claimant's case is that this is not a cure. It is the retained framework and footprint of the earlier garden-room development, stripped of some doors, windows and finishes, with new labels applied after the First-tier Tribunal decision."

Mr Deeljur said the First-tier Tribunal had recorded the initial garden room – before Mr Salmon's remedial work and creation of the bar – as including "full-height UPVC patio doors, separate mains electricity supply, an electric doorbell and exterior signs reading 'man cave' and 'The Den'".

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He said: "The real question is whether the later works removed the mischief, or whether the defendants retained the substance of the unauthorised building or erection.

"The 2022 works did not remedy the breach. They removed some obvious room-like features, but did not remove the substance of the additional building or erection."

'No evidence' shed is not a shed

James Culverwell, the Salmons' barrister, said whatever name was given to it, the structure containing the bar at the bottom of the couple's garden was now a "pergola-type" structure and therefore within the terms of the agreement.

He said: "Shed is an ordinary, common-sense word meaning 'a small building that is used for storing things such as garden tools'. This precisely describes the 'shed' which is in the defendants' garden.

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"The claimant has not adduced any evidence to support her contention that the shed is not a shed. My clients say they have changed what was there before and it complies with the agreement and with the lease."

Mr Salmon, giving evidence, insisted he had changed his garden development so that what remained complied with the lease and the agreement for a pergola. He told the judge: "It's now a shed for domestic purposes and the pergola is back as what was agreed with the claimant."

The judge reserved his ruling on the dispute until a later date.

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