A Chorleywood retiree has been hit with a legal bill for almost £1,000 after believing a "myth" about the road outside his house being private.

Geoffrey Powell, 53, of Clements Road, parked his Renault Espace on a stretch of the same road close to his house and officially declared to the DVLA that it was off the road while he wasn’t using it.

Mr Powell says almost as soon as he had made the declaration in March 2012, "an unfriendly neighbour" who is a member of the "private road committee" reported him to Chorleywood Parish Council.

He said a PCSO funded by the parish council issued him with a fixed penalty notice for keeping a vehicle on the road without a tax disk, which he challenged believing it was allowed as the car was parked on private land.

At a court hearing in Watford Magistrates Court earlier this month an expert from Hertfordshire County Council declared the private section of the road only started after the bend - despite the widely held view that the corner itself was private.

Mr Powell said during the hearing a Hertfordshire County Council highways expert cast doubt over whether any of the road was private. However, a spokesman this week said the county council did consider the section private.

Mr Powell’s total legal costs amounted to £935 and he voiced his surprise that the corner section of Clements Road - which was recently tarmaced at the residents’ own expense - was actually a part of the main highways network.

He said: "I challenged it through the court on the basis that it was on a private road. It has taken a year to get this case heard.

"I have believed the corner was private ever since I have lived here, I moved in 1988 and all that time I was led to believe the corner was private.

"We were a bit aggravated in the past when we couldn’t have a cable put in for internet because they weren’t allowed to dig the road up.

"There is nothing whatsoever to say the road is private although residents have tried to put up gate posts in the past.

"I had never even contemplated that this section of the road wasn’t private, getting the fine certainly shocked us."

Mr Powell added that he would consider seeking permission to have an underground cable installed under the public section of the highway.