A PENSIONER is facing a £1,381 bill for refusing to clean up his “junk yard” of a garden.

Anthony Hamilton was prosecuted last year for the state he left his garden in - but one year on his garden remained strewn with rubbish.

Rother District Council prosecuted the 75-year-old again for distressing neighbours with the mess, which includes builders’ waste, compost and manure bags, pallets, plastic bags, sheeting and cardboard boxes.

Hamilton, of Southcourt Avenue, Bexhill, was handed a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £1,366 in court costs for the council and a £15 surcharge failing to comply with a previous order to clear up the mess.

He denied the offence but was tried and convicted at Eastbourne Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, August 5.

In July last year he admitted and was convicted of the same offence after ignoring an enforcement notice issued under the Town and Country Planning Act.

He was fined £750, ordered to pay a £75 victim surcharge and the council’s court costs of £1,104.

This time magistrates told him to clear up the mess or the council would do it for him and bill him for the work.

Ian Hollidge, the council’s cabinet member for environment, transport and public realm, said Hamilton’s garden was a “blight” on an otherwise tidy street.

He said: “For years now, residents of Southcourt Avenue had to put up with living near something resembling a junk yard, which is a blight on an otherwise clean and tidy street.

“Mr Hamilton has had plenty of chances to comply with the order and clear up the mess, but for reasons known to himself has chosen not to do so.

“I would strongly urge him to take heed of what he was told in court and bring to an end a saga which has already taken up many hours of our officers’ time and resulted in considerable expense to himself.”