A couple who claimed their neighbour installed a mannequin to watch them undress in their £1.5m home have lost a High Court privacy battle.
TV costume designer Rosie Taylor-Davies and husband Christopher said they were forced to live with curtains drawn after Simon Cook built a Velux window which faced into their Richmond Park bedroom – and then put a blonde mannequin in it.
At the High Court, a senior judge said Mr Cook did not take his neighbours’ privacy concerns ‘seriously’, but ruled that he had not breached planning rules by installing an openable window with clear glass.
Rosie and Christopher Taylor-Davies complained of a mannequin placed in neighbour’s window overlooking their Richmond Park home
The Dover House Road houses at centre of privacy battle over loft window. Simon Cook’s house (left) overlooks the Taylor-Davies house (right)
In February 2020, the local council, London Borough of Wandsworth, gave Mr Cook planning permission for extensive work on his home, but laid down conditions that the dormer window should have obscured glass and be non-opening.
The work involved a roof extension with dormer windows on both sides and at the back, but Mr and Mrs Taylor-Davies objected to elements of the project, calling the windows an ‘invasion of their privacy’.
The houses are on a slope meaning that the window provides a view directly into the Taylor-Davies’s house – inclduding their clear-sided shower.
The Velux ‘directly overlooks our bed,’ they said, claiming that they would be ‘overlooked day and night’ on their top floor, where they sleep and shower, and Mrs Taylor-Davies studies for her PhD in embroidery.
However, council planning officers waived those rules for the Velux, because it ‘faces the sky’ and would have less impact on neighbours.
The Taylor-Davies’s were looking to force Simon Cook to frost the glass on his Velux window
The couple said the fact the window did not use frosted glass meant they had to resort to getting undressed behind a bookcase, the only point on their top floor where they could not be seen from his new window.
Challenging the council’s decision not to take ‘enforcement action’ to make Mr Cook obscure the rooflight glass, their barrister Stephen Whale argued before High Court judge, Mrs Justice Lang, that the window had robbed them of their privacy.
Justice Lang said: ‘It serves to give the impression, as presumably he intends, that there is a person at the window overlooking their property and invading their privacy,’ he told the court.
‘It only adds to their distress. The overlooking of their property and the invasion of their privacy as a result of the Velux window is very distressing to them.
‘There is no good reason for the Velux window to have clear glass or be openable as there is another window very close on the opposite wall.
Simon Cook allegedly put a blonde mannequin in the window to make the Taylor-Davies’s uncomfortable
‘There would be no loss of amenity to Mr Cook were the Velux window to have opaque glass and be non-openable.
‘The only thing the Velux window overlooks is the top floor of the claimants’ house.’
The barrister said the council had been wrong in refusing to take enforcement action against Mr Cook in relation to the window.
Giving judgment, Mrs Justice Lang said: ‘Mr Cook periodically installs a mannequin in the roof light which gives the impression that there is a person at the window looking out at [the claimants’ home].
‘This suggests to me that he is not taking the claimants’ concerns seriously, and so he is unlikely to maintain obscuring film voluntarily.’
But she said there was nothing in the planning conditions obliging him to obscure the rooflight’s glass.
They only required Mr Cook to obscure his new dormer window, she said.
She also noted that Mr Cook had added an ‘obscuring film’ to part of the rooflight, although adding that it could easily be removed.
The couple, both New Zealanders, moved into their home beside Richmond Park 27 years ago and raised a family there.
Mrs Taylor-Davies, 62, is a costume designer, who has worked in TV, film and theatre, as well as winning a local council award for her campaign to make protective scrubs for medics during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Her husband, Mr Taylor-Davies, 59, is a technical consultant and software designer.
Speaking from his home after the court hearing, Mr Taylor-Davies said the mannequin is no longer at her station by the window.
‘We’ve lived here for more than 20 years, but we might have to move out because of all this,’ he explained.
‘We can’t take a shower or get dressed without being overlooked,’ he said, adding that their only option was to keep the curtains drawn.
‘It’s essentially like living in darkness,’ he said.
Mr Cook was not a party to the case, which was an attempt by judicial review by Mr and Mrs Taylor-Davies to get the council to take action against him.
