Company boss, 72, and wife, 80, convicted of assault and criminal damage against neighbours over long-running driveway access dispute
A ‘stubborn’ company boss has been convicted of throttling his next door neighbour and slamming a gate on to his Jaguar F-Pace car during a bust-up over their shared driveway.
Trevor Hollisey, 72, had been pressure washing his drive before he attacked his haemophiliac neighbour Neil Ford who was returning with his wife Michelle and daughter Sophie, 19, from a holiday.
Ipswich magistrates heard how he failed get out of the way to allow the Fords to drive over his land and slammed the couple’s gate shut after Mrs Ford opened it.
He put his hands around Mr Ford’s throat while his wife Jennifer Hollisey, 80, slapped a mobile phone out of Sophie’s hand as she was filming the scene in Bressingham, Norfolk.
Mr Hollisey had denied assault by beating of Mr Ford, intentional strangulation of him, and causing criminal damage worth £1,363 to his car by slamming the gate on it, but was convicted of the charges. He was cleared of assault by beating of Mrs Ford
His wife denied assault by beating of Sophie Ford, and causing £3.99 of damage to her mobile phone screen protecter, but was found guilty. She was cleared of assault by beating of Mr Ford due to a lack of proof.
The couple who were described by the prosecution as ‘stubborn’ and ‘unreasonable’ had claimed they had acted in self-defence during their two day trial.
But presiding magistrate Stuart Roy said the Fords were credible witnesses while the Holliseys were ‘inconsistent’ in their evidence and ‘not credible’.
Trevor Hollisey, 72, and his wife, Jennifer, 80, claimed they acted in self-defence but presiding magistrate Stuart Roy said their claims were ‘not credible’
He added that Mr Hollisey had acted ‘recklessly’ by grabbing Mr Ford ‘tightly around the neck’ when he was a vulnerable person.
Mr Roy said: ‘We don’t believe that this force was reasonable and don’t believe it was appropriate under self-defence.’
He also dismissed Mr Hollisey’s claim that he Mrs Ford had shoved the gate herself to deliberately damage the car in ‘retaliation’ for having to pay for damage to his car in an unrelated civil court case.
Sentencing of Mr Hollisey was adjourned for probation reports and will take place at Norwich magistrates court on April 9.
Mrs Hollisey was fined £173 for assaulting Sophie, and ordered to pay a £69 surcharge and £325 prosecution costs. There was no separate sentence for criminal damage to the phone, but she was ordered to pay £3.99 compensation for the damaged cover.
She was also given a restraining order banning her from contact with the Fords or contacting any employer of Sophie Ford for 18 months.
The court heard how the Fords had an easement allowing them to drive across the Holliseys’ drive to access their detached house which they bought for £672,000 in September 2021.
But there had been ‘a long running dispute’ between the two couples since Mr and Mrs Ford installed gates which opened up on to the Holliseys’ driveway.
Neil Ford had been returning from a few days away with his wife Michelle and daughter Sophie, 19
University of Abderdeen student Sophie was assaulted by Jennifer Hollisey, who also damaged her mobile phone screen protector
The bad feeling quickly escalated when the Fords returned to their private cul-de-sac on December 30, 2024, after ‘a few days vacation’ and found Mr Hollisey pressure-washing his driveway and not getting out of their way.
Mrs Ford jumped out and asked Mr Hollisey to open the gate to her home before she did it herself.
Mr Hollisey who runs an Essex-based bathroom and kitchen company with his wife, carried on spraying, and Mrs Ford moved his wheelbarrow to allow her husband to drive through.
CCTV and mobile phone footage showed Mr Hollisey calling her husband ‘a f***ing moron’, and saying: ‘I am busy, can’t you see that? Are you f***ing stupid?’
As the pensioner slammed the gate shut, Sophie who was filming on her phone yelled: ‘If you damage my car, I will genuinely hurt you’. Mr Hollisey responded by saying: ‘You stupid little cow… You’re as bad as your mother.’
Mrs Ford told the court that she opened the gate again, only for Mr Hollisey to shut it on the side and wing mirror of her husband’s Jaguar F-Pace.
She denied his claims that she shoved the gate into his legs and then pushed it onto the car herself to deliberately damage it as retaliation for the earlier civil court action.
Footage also showed Mr Hollisey and Mr Ford pushing each other, and Mr Hollisey grabbing his neighbour’s neck.
Summing up the case, prosecutor John Cooper said: ‘The Fords drove up in their motor car. All they wanted to do was drive on to their driveway and close the gate behind them. That was an entirely reasonable and a perfectly legal thing to do.
‘Mr Hollisey, I’m afraid, is a very stubborn man. He doesn’t like the Fords and is a man who likes to be in control.
‘Rather than being courteous and stopping the pressure washer, and moving the wheelbarrow, he decides to ignore her (Mrs Ford) and then become argumentative about it. When the wheelbarrow was moved, out of the way, he descended into abuse.’
The Fords were trying to drive onto their property over the driveway when the bust-up took place
Mr Cooper described claims that Mrs Ford had deliberately damaged her husband’s car as ‘simply preposterous’. He added that Mr Ford had tried to act as ‘a peacemaker’ throughout the incident.
The prosecutor continued: ‘The idea that either of the Holliseys were acting in self-defence is simply not credible. They are the ones who caused trouble out of their unreasonableness and stubbornness.
Barrister Joseph Mckenna, representing the Holliseys, told magistrates that they had to be sure of the couple’s guilt to convict them.
He added: ‘What you have here is two old age pensioners. They are not a couple of 20-year-olds coming to court for the first time. It likely after all this time that they are going to offer violence to their neighbours?’
Mr McKenna argued that Mrs Ford’s dragging of the wheelbarrow ‘forcibly’ and pushing the gate ‘within an inch’ of Mr Hollisey could be interpreted as him being attacked.
Mr Hollisey insisted that he did not initially know the Fords were trying to drive into their property as he was busy pressure washing.
Giving evidence today, he claimed he only realised they were there when he looked over his shoulder and saw Mrs Ford as she asked him to open the gate in a ‘very demanding’ way.
He said that he told her to open the gate inwards on to her own driveway as he was busy, and she responded by pulling away his wheelbarrow and pulling the gate outwards over his property.
Mr Hollisey told the court: ‘I said, ‘How dare you touch my property?’ I grabbed it and pulled it back. The next thing I remember is that Mr Ford came out of the car. He spoke in a calm, but nasty way, saying all he wanted to do was go on his drive.’
He claimed that he had felt threatened by Sophie Ford who was filming him and his wife ‘with a smile on her face’.
Mr Hollisey added that Mrs Ford had pushed the gate against him before ‘purposefully pulling it back’ to deliberately damage her husband’s car in ‘retaliation’ for him having earlier taken them to court.
He said that Mr Ford had pushed him, after parking his car, so he had pushed him back. Mr Ford then grabbed him by the neck, saying: ‘I will rip your windpipe out’, he said.
He claimed he tried to push his neighbour off him by grabbing his neck in self-defence, but insisted he was not intentionally strangling him
At the same time, Mrs Ford was shouting to his wife: ‘Drag him away Jen, he will kill him. Honestly Jen, he’ll f***ing kill him.’
He added that marks left on Mr Hollisey’s neck must have been caused by the pimples on his blue gardening gloves that he was wearing.
Mr Hollisey admitted swearing as the Fords had wrenched his equipment from him and driven across his drive ‘without his permission’. He added that Mrs Ford had told him to ‘f*** off’ a few weeks earlier.
Tempers flared at the detached houses in the Norfolk village of Bressingham
He denied ‘being stubborn’ and ‘a control freak’ for simply not moving out of the way to allow the Fords to drive through.
Mr Hollisey said: ‘I was working there. I was busy, and it was my property. I was asking them to open the gate inwards which I am quite entitled to do when someone is trespassing on my property.’
He said: ‘We were being attacked by three people. We are not the sort of people who run behind a gate and call the police… We have never been in a situation like this in all our years.’
Mrs Hollisey said she believed her husband was being attacked when she looked out of a bedroom window and saw Mr Ford trying to pull the pressure washer away from him and Mrs Ford ‘throwing the wheelbarrow around’.
She admitted pushing the phone out of Sophie’s hand, but said she did so in self-defence as other neighbours looked on.
Mrs Hollisey added: ‘She was in my face and I felt threatened by this so knocked her arm to get out of my face. She dropped it and the phone landed on its back.
‘Everything went into chaos. I was in the middle of it all. It was very confusing. I had no intentions at all.’
Mrs Hollisey also admitted slapping Mr Ford in the face, but said it was ‘an automatic reaction’ after he had pushed and kicked her.
When Mr Cooper asked if she hated the Fords, she replied: ‘I don’t hate them. I dislike them. They are not nice people. For four years, we have suffered abuse and harassment.’
Mr Ford earlier told the court how Mr Hollisey had been ‘squaring up’ to his wife and yelling abuse with ‘his fists cocked ready to go’.
Describing the melee, he said: ‘I felt a whack on my face and my glasses went. Mrs Hollisey had hit me. I stood up and I then had Mr Hollisey grabbing me around my throat in a strangling fashion with a thumb around one side and fingers around the other.
‘It was extremely tight and prevented breathing. I wasn’t going to stand and be strangled so I grabbed his jumper and pushed him backwards.’
Mr Ford said his moderate haemophilia meant it was extremely dangerous for him if he got his head knocked. He had to immediately inject himself to prevent bleeding after the incident.
Mrs Ford said she had asked her daughter, a medical student at Aberdeen University, to film the scene because she feared Mr Hollisey’s ‘volatile’ behaviour.
She said: ‘He pushed the gate and hit the mirror and the side of the car… Mrs Hollisey then came stomping down the drive, wagging her finger in my face.
‘By now, we had the car on the drive, but Mrs Hollisey had hold of the gate to keep it open. She was standing in front of the gate so it couldn’t be closed. She turned round and whacked Sophie’s hand, sending her phone flying to the floor.’
Mrs Ford said she now felt uncomfortable going out the front of her house in case she saw Mr Hollisey, and her husband had to watch her from a bedroom window if she went out to the shops.
She said: ‘It’s 15 months since it happened and it has played heavily. It has affected us. That was our dream home. We worked hard to get that house, but I don’t want to live there anymore.’