A ‘NEIGHBOUR from hell’ has been jailed after making a couple’s life a misery.

A court heard David Hardaker, 48, triggered his house alarm and sounded his car horn to stop his neighbour Carol Stevenson sleeping in the day when she worked nights at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

He also accused her of being linked to the Taliban and of threatening to have him killed. The only time she and her husband had any respite from harassment was when he went away on holiday.

But, the court was told that when he went away last summer he put a scarecrow and sat it in a chair,  positioning it so that it looked directly up at his neighbours’ bedroom window.

Hardaker was said to be obsessed with harassing Mrs Stevenson following a boundary dispute over a gate .

Mrs Stevenson and her husband had to go to the county court in Chester in 2007 to get the gates removed.

He obeyed the court order but left the bright yellow gate posts in place – and a second order had to be obtained to get them removed. That, she said, left him “fuming”.

Ever since then, their life had become a living hell, Flintshire Magistrates’ Court at Mold was told.

Hardaker, of Bryn Celyn, Holywell, who said he had now put his bright yellow £375,000 home up for sale, denied harrassment and being in breach of a noise abatement notice, but was convicted.

Magistrates jailed him for 26 weeks.

They described his behaviour as “vindictive, malicious and despicable.”

He was ordered to pay her £5,000 in compensation – £2,000 for the trauma and distress, £2,000 for her loss of earnings because she could not work nights thanks to him, and £1,000 for the damage he had caused.

Magistrates ordered him to pay £1,500 to the Crown Prosecution Service and £2,200 to Flintshire Council.

A life-time restraining order was also made so the Stevensons can peacefully enjoy their home in future.