Tom Hollis: Councillor must pay £1k to neighbours he harassed

A councillor who harassed his two neighbours and falsely told police that one had chased him with a carving knife must pay them £1,000.

Tom Hollis also repeatedly accused his male neighbour of being a paedophile, including in front of the neighbour's young daughter.

He was then deputy leader of Ashfield District Council in Nottinghamshire but has been removed from his position.

The harassment was so bad that the couple moved house, a court heard.

Nottingham Magistrates' Court was told that Hollis started harassing the couple in May 2020, after the woman phoned 101 because she had seen people visit his house during lockdown.

"Your reaction to that complaint was completely out of proportion to what had been done," District Judge Leo Pyle told Hollis.

"The reaction showed your arrogance and belief that you were somehow more important than your neighbours.

"There was clearly serious distress caused to both parents and daughter, and it did culminate in them having to move."

The judge gave Hollis a 12-month community order with a requirement to do 200 hours of unpaid work in the community. He ordered Hollis to pay the couple £500 each, a victim surcharge of £95, and £1,000 towards the prosecution costs.

He also fined Hollis £570 for careless driving and gave him six penalty points, for an unrelated incident in which police pulled him over for speeding and he then reversed into a police car.

Mark Fielding, prosecuting, said the two harassment offences happened over a period of three weeks, between 2 and 25 May 2020.

Hollis, who is now 29, was then living in Windmill Close in Sutton-in-Ashfield, next to Shannon Jones-Golding and her husband Luke Golding.

"An allegation was made that the defendant was having soirees at his property," said Mr Fielding.

The trial heard that Mrs Jones-Golding phoned police to ask if Hollis was allowed to hold meetings in his hot tub.

However, the judge made a finding that Hollis was not holding council meetings in his hot tub, and had legitimate reasons for people visiting his home.

Mr Fielding said Hollis responded by abusing his neighbours over the fence.

Hollis also wrote to the couple using council headed notepaper, which Mr Fielding described as being "an abuse of his position" and sent an email "with quotes from the Bible", despite being told not to communicate with them.

Mr Fielding said there was another "confrontation" on 16 May, when the male neighbour was mending a bicycle in his garden with his father, which Hollis "took exception to".

"He called Mr Golding a paedophile in front of his six-year-old child," said Mr Fielding.

"Mr Golding said he found it awful having to explain to his six-year-old child what a paedophile was, and presumably having to explain to the six-year-old child why Daddy wasn't a paedophile."

Hollis then called police and accused his neighbour of chasing him with a "one-and-a-half-foot carving knife" while "theatrically screaming", said Mr Fielding.

"It was all a ploy to get Mr Golding arrested for knife crime," said Mr Fielding.

Police arrived to arrest the neighbour, including one officer who was armed with a Taser.

"He [Hollis] calmed down when police arrived, and in his calmness he still insisted with the report that his neighbour had chased him with a carving knife," said Mr Fielding.

However, Mrs Jones-Golding had filmed the incident on her mobile phone and was able to show that the allegation was false.

Mr Fielding said further incidents of harassment included the "erection of a wall to block access to the front of the Goldings' house", and "the parking of a caravan, albeit for 10 hours".

In a victim personal statement read to the court, Mrs Jones-Golding said Hollis had "made our lives at home sometimes unbearable", and her daughter had been too scared to play outside in the garden.

She said they had sold their house for £30,000 less than what it was worth to get away from Hollis.

In his victim personal statement, Mr Golding said it made him "physically sick" each time that Hollis shouted at him he was a paedophile, which happened on "numerous occasions".

In relation to the false knife allegation, he said: "If I had been arrested I would certainly have been suspended from work and had Hollis continued with his lies I would have been convicted and lost my job for something I clearly didn't do."

"No-one should have to put up with this level of harassment from their neighbour, but Hollis was also deputy leader of Ashfield District Council," he said.

Although no longer deputy council leader, Hollis remains a councillor for the Huthwaite and Brierley ward.

The court heard that he had one previous conviction for common assault, which dated from 2015, and he was given a conditional discharge for this.

Defending Hollis, Errol Ballentyne said he had been under a lot of stress due to work when he harassed his neighbours.

"It is clear now that he is full of remorse for the way that he behaved over that three-week period," said Mr Ballentyne.

"It was out of character, of relatively short duration, and brought about because of public spirited hard work that he was doing at the time."

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