The trial of a man charged with engaging in coercive behaviour towards his partner has been postponed after the courtroom was declared "too cold to work in".
Richard Gardiner, 57 of Heywood Road, Shelfanger, Diss, was due to appear in Great Yarmouth Magistrates' Court for trial on February 15 charged with engaging in controlling and coercive behaviour in an intimate relationship between January 2016 and October 2019.
He is alleged to have controlled the victim's finances, demanded she added a tracking app on her phone, insisted on access to her personal messages and emails, let her car tyres down, threw a kettle across the kitchen, stopped her attending the gym and behaved in a generally unpredictable manner towards her.
However, both the witnesses and the defendant had to be sent home after problems with central heating throughout the entire courthouse meant room temperature was at just 11C - making it "prohibitively cold" for solicitors to concentrate.
After waiting nearly two hours for the arrival of an engineer, the decision was made to postpone the trial, which will now be taking place on Tuesday and Thursday of this week.
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