Eric Harper with the offending hedge.

War has broken out between neighbours on a quiet suburban street in the Black Country over a 15ft-high hedge which is said to be severely restricting natural light into an elderly couple’s home.

Ex-regimental sergeant major Eric Harper and his wife Grace claim they often have to switch on their house lights on bright summer days due to the shadow cast by the towering conifers.

Despite a request to trim the hedge, neighbours Mendies Hylton and Margaret Cochrane did not oblige and also ignored a notice from Wolverhampton Council ordering them to carry out the work.

Now the pair, both 49, have ended up in Wolverhampton Magistrates Court after being prosecuted by the city council under the Anti-Social Behaviour Act.

Relations between the two couples, who used to be on first-name terms, were said to have deteriorated rapidly after July 2006 when 81-year-old Mr Harper posted a letter through next door’s letterbox in Rathlin Close, Pendeford Rise, Pendeford, Wolverhampton, asking for the hedge to be trimmed back by the end of October.

Mendies Hylton and Margaret Cochrane

He had already asked Hylton in person some months before, when he said his neighbour had asked for time to raise cash to have the work carried out.

Eventually Mr Harper complained to the council to bring the three-year-long dispute to an end but yesterday’s hearing had to be adjourned until May 19 because Cochrane was suffering from a throat infection and could not speak.

The couple, who have not yet entered a plea to the charge of failing to act on a council notice to cut the hedge, argue they cannot afford to have the work done since Hylton, a Goodyear employee, had his hours cut to one day a week.

The pair appealed against the notice but an inspection carried out by a team from Bristol agreed with Wolverhampton environmental officers – that the hedge should be at least halved in height.

Mr Harper, who was in the Army for 33 years, said: “This has been very upsetting. Wherever we have lived – in Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Borneo, Germany, Ghana, Borneo – we have got on with our neighbours. But relations between us have become very frosty indeed.”

After the hearing Cochrane said: “This has been a nightmare.”