Chelmsford Borough Council has constructed a 6ft fence in an attempt to bring peace to a two-year neighbours' dispute.

But the £1,000 close-board fence has failed to end the row -- with both parties officially claiming through the borough disputes procedure that the other is a nuisance.

Now a councillor has said that the only way to solve the angry impasse is to rehouse one of the two families.

Mrs Carmela Smith and her son, Paul, 26, have lived in their modern end-of-terrace council-owned home in Tennyson Road since it was built nine years ago.

Mandy Johnson moved in with her son, Reiss, 12, and daughter, Poppy, five, two years ago.

Both counter-claim and deny throwing items into each other's gardens .

This Is Essex interviewed both women on Wednesday and, eventually, Mrs Smith -- standing on a stool -- began conversing for the first time, initially heatedly, over the fence with Ms Johnson.

But Mrs Smith said later that she had no intention of speaking to her again.

Ms Johnson said that Mrs Smith's attitude had been unreasonable.

Mrs Smith, who claims that the Johnson family is noisy -- particularly playing music regularly at night -- has sticky-taped a solicitor's letter to her porch.

Ward councillor Bill Horslen said: "The council invested in a fence to try to calm things down. All these cases are six of one and half a dozen of the other but, for the sake of the other neighbours, I am asking the housing department to do something further about it -- if necessary rehousing one or other of them".

Mrs Smith said: "We keep this place nice and it has been our home for nine years. It should be she who moves.

"I cannot stand living with her next door."

Ms Johnson said: "I don't feel we have done anything unreasonable. I don't want to move, because I am getting the house as I like it.

"I would like to talk fully with Carmela over all this. Peace would be nice for the sake of my kids. I don't play loud music -- apart from at my son's birthday barbecue last year."

Mrs Smith makes a point in her first face-to-face with Ms Johnson.

Picture: GRAHAM LIDDELL

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