A neighbourly feud involving a damaged garden gnome resulted in a 15-month legal ordeal for a law-abiding grandmother.

Lorraine Hutton branded the draconian saga ‘an enormous waste of time and public money’, after being accused of deliberately damaging the 18-inch ceramic ornament.

Mrs Hutton, 66, admitted she had accidentally broken off one of the gnome’s legs while moving it from a communal pathway outside her flat in Bournemouth, and said she had already apologised to its owner, Lilijana Cekauskiene.

She also said she posted £20 through her neighbour’s letterbox to cover the damage. But Mrs Hutton was horrified when Mrs Cekauskiene reported the damage to Dorset Police and accused her of breaking the gnome ‘provocatively’.

The 66-year-old was then ordered to attend a police station for interview and formally charged with criminal damage. 

A convoluted court saga followed, which is thought to have cost the taxpayer thousands of pounds – including £4,000 to pay for Mrs Hutton’s legal aid, £1,000 for her psychiatric evaluation, a £55-per-hour Lithuanian interpreter for Mrs Cekauskiene and magistrates’ court costs, which can be upwards of £1,000 a day.

Fifteen months and three court dates later, and Mrs Hutton has been formally exonerated of any crime – and she criticised the police and the Criminal Prosecution Service (CPS) for wasting taxpayers’ cash by allowing the case to go to court.

‘This has just been an enormous waste of time and public money,’ she said.

‘We have been to court three or four times for this case. I have never been in trouble with the police in my life, not even a parking ticket, and for people of my generation to have to go to court is embarrassing.

‘I’m 66 and disabled. I don’t see how it was in the public interest to take it to court.’

Official statistics show that Bournemouth had the worst crime rate in the south-west of England in 2024. Crimes involving possessing an offensive weapon were up 22.9 per cent and shoplifting offences rose by 5.5 per cent. 

Meanwhile, in 2022/23, 77 per cent of burglaries went unresolved. But Wessex CPS, which brought the case against Mrs Hutton, insisted it was in the public interest.

A spokesman said: ‘In this case, we decided that there was sufficient evidence and that it was in the public interest to proceed.’

A spokesman for Dorset Police added: ‘We will always carry out an investigation into reported criminal damage incidents irrespective of the type of damage alleged to have been caused. A case is then submitted to the CPS, who will then decide whether or not to bring a case before the courts.’