A CITY of York councillor has been ordered to fork out £22,500 after losing a three-year battle with his neighbour over the boundary of their front gardens.

Coun Christian Vassie was yesterday ordered to pay Len Rawlinson's legal costs by a York County Court judge after a three-year struggle to ascertain the border between their plots, in Blake Court, Wheldrake, York.

Mr Rawlinson, 62, said he had wanted to resolve the boundary with Mr Vassie, who represents Wheldrake ward and is a composer, without going to court, but they had been unable to reach an agreement.

"My legal bill was going up and up and up," he said.

He said Mr Vassie, who was head chorister at York Minster, was not prepared to accept a surveyor from his list to determine the boundary, and that the councillor had insisted he wanted the president of the Royal Institute Of Chartered Surveyors to nominate a surveyor to determine the border.

Mr Rawlinson said a York County Court-appointed surveyor produced a report which determined what the boundary should be.

Mr Rawlinson said this boundary was the one he had offered his neighbour about six times in the last three years.

He said Coun Vassie had finally agreed to that boundary the day before the court hearing, which had been about deciding the legal costs.

"I've won the case hands down," Mr Rawlinson said. "On the question of costs, Vassie's come out of it very badly. We have gone round in a full circle and ended up where we started from four years ago. I have gained nothing but all I wanted was what I had at the outset.

"But at least my monthly legal bills - which have been quite prodigious - will be stopping very shortly.

"What Vassie's been ordered to pay me will clear off what is in the pipeline.

"All the money I have paid out on legal fees has been my pension nest egg.

"I have just got to accept it has been very expensive.

"It has not ruined me, but if it had gone on very much longer it would have been even harder."

The Press repeatedly tried to contact Coun Vassie for comment, but he was unavailable.