THEY wouldn't be the first neighbours to fall out over a TV make-over show.

Two sisters whose design dreams on their run-down house won them a place on television say their home is at risk of break-ins after neighbours put up scaffolding in the front garden.

Natalie and Tanja Milton, whose £240,000 renovation project was shown on Channel 4's Property Ladder last Wednesday, said they could not believe it when the scaffolding appeared the following day.

TV viewers had seen how the neighbours had refused the girls access to the next door garden when the sisters wanted to render the side of their house.

But the day after last week's broadcast, the neighbours installed scaffolding on the sisters' property.

Terry Thornton, who owns the neighbouring house in Sandbanks Road, said the girls' estate agent was given 14 days' notice of his work, which is to erect a wall on the flat roof of his property to give the occupants of both houses more privacy.

Dad Terry said the sisters' renovation project had gone unfinished because the neighbours would not co-operate.

"The rendering hasn't been done. It's just been left crumbling because we couldn't have access, we couldn't get permission from them," he said.

"We just accepted that, but then all of a sudden, almost overnight, this scaffolding just appeared in our front garden."

Tanja added: "We would never be so small-minded as to say they can't do any work on their house, but you just have to ask.

"We can't leave this house now. We've got to be here all day because it's so easy to just hop off the scaffolding to the balcony and in through our French windows."

But Mr Thornton, 73, who blames the stroke he had this year on the stress of the Miltons' renovation, said: "When they wanted to put scaffolding up we had birds nesting - it's against the law for us as well as them to disturb them.

"Now I'm building a screen between us and them for their privacy as well as ours. The council was quite in agreement with this.

"There was a letter sent to their estate agent, Harbourfront Properties, giving 14 days' notice of work and what it entailed.

"All I'm trying to do is get my wall up and my scaffolding out as fast as I can. I just want to have done with it."

First published: September 28