Please can you advise? Noise complaint

yummymummy1987_2

Hi i hope this is the right forum for this but im after some advice. I live in a HA property and had a surprise visit from the site manager to say a complaint had been made about my banging and slamming noises which she says is my children?
Tbh im really shocked my son is at school through the day and i have a 10 month old baby whos not even walking. I asked to give some times/examples etc and she couldnt? Just said that the woman didnt want to come to me personally as she was worried she would fly off the handle at me???? :rolleyes:
The HM said the woman had problems in her last property so is particularly sensitive to noise.
Now im wondering where I stand, i dont believe we are excessivly noisy we lived in a flat prior to this one and NEVER had any complaints for the 3 yrs we lived there. My other neighbour told me she recieved a letter under her door complaining of slamming her front door but these 2 are friends so dont think it would be from her?

I would never let my children be really noisy/run about etc as well it would drive me mad lol but they are kids and im just a bit unsure the way forward? if it was crying of the baby etc i could understand but banging and slamming??

Aparently she bangs on my ceiling?!!!! but have never heard this either

Cant find anything online as its all aimed at the complaintant etc

Just very shocked as never been in this situation and i would never go out of my way to annoy anyone im just not that type of person AT all

Thanks for any advice
x

yummymummy1987_2

Forgot to add, this lady has a parrott and in the meeting prior to us all moving in she was told we wasnt allowed any pets, she said she had this bird and was told that she must keep it quiet. Well it squarks alot and she tells it to shut up really loud obviously with the windows open we can hear and my son actually said "why does she tell a animal to shut up" god love him! so i mentioned to the manager i was surprised that she had complained and asked her to pass on the msg that we should all be consious of each other and that i try my best but she needs to let me know when she hears these noises as i have no idea and the manager said she didnt want to get involved with tit for tat?!!!
My mums best friend is a noise pollution officer for the council and i was wondering if i should get her to monitor my noise as im so worried

floss2

I would ask your Housing Officer for precise details to determine exactly what is making the noise.....if she won't get involved, then ask for her to request that the neighbour makes a formal complaint and you will get the noise team to monitor your noise levels. And take a look at this website for some further advice Noise

Could it be a noisy hot water system or boiler? Or any other neighbours?

pug_in_a_bed

Hello, Im a housing officer:j

If there is a genuine complaint, then the lady complaining would be asked to fill in logs detailing times/issues etc, so it sounds like this is at a very early stage. I wouldnt worry too much at this stage, although I can see it would be upsetting. If you find the parrot stuff annoying, have you thought about logging this yourself, times etc, just in case.

This sounds very similar to a couple I have who complain about doors banging etc, every time a new tenant moves in, and Ive now discovered that theyve made the same complaints in their last property! You could try diffusing the situation slightly by popping down for a friendly chat to try and find out the so called problems, however this would mean being exceptionally calm - which I realise could be hard!

We get a lot of tit for tat complaints where neighbours just don't seem to like each other, and then it escalates.

Keep calm for the time being, give the housing officer a call in a week and ask if there have been any more complaints - if your behaviour hasn't changed, then I think you'll know there's something odd going on. If there has been, it could be a good idea to put something in writing to the housing asking for details and times etc of these complaints, so you can compare. If they have it, they should tell you the details.

Pets wise, we don't allow pets but have accepted birds. However, I think a parrot is really stretching this. Did you mention to the h.o at all about the parrot?

yummymummy1987_2

:eek: Just wrote a massive reply only for lil monkey to come along and press delete!!!!!

Firstly thanks for your replys.
My dp came to pick me up from my mums and could tell i was worried so phoned the housing manager to just hear the story from her and also to see what the lady had said after she went back to her.

She basically said that she was actually at the womans house talking about a whole different issue and that we just came up in topic and the women said about the banging and said she would not speak to me and that the HM should do it, but didnt put in a offical complaint and also didnt give any times or dates etc. Michael explained that he certainly didnt want to get into tit for tat for anyone (he works 12 hr days he aint got time for things like this plus like me just isnt the type) but did actually say there was alot of issues her end that could be seen as antisocial, ie her banging on our ceiling, he said we had never heard and that he would have gone down to HER if he thought she was making too much noise plus about the parrot etc and she said although they dont allow pets they have made a allowance as it is a caged pet. I also didnt say to her but we as a couple discussed a time i actually said to her daughter that i really didnt think she should be shining a laser pen in peoples window but id completly forgot as to be honestly i make alot of allowances for people.

She said not to worry but told michael the next stages, which aparently are the forms do record dates etc then mediation? Feel a bit gutted its happened as i really worried about coming home and keeping the kids really quiet, baby dropped a box with bits in it on the floor and i was like shhhhhhhhhhhh :rotfl:but i know we cant live like that!!!!
Also another thing from ur post HO she said it had started recently from what i can gather but nothing has changed????????? only thing i could think possibly could be is baby crawling really fast on floor but its carpeted and underlayed so what more can i do????

Once again thank you for your replys

PrincessPlaty

I had a situation like this with an old neighbour!

Im not the sort of person that can sit in front of the tv all day it sends me to sleep i listen to music instead, when i first moved in the desk which i had my laptop on was against the adjoining wall (i didnt have any speakers for the laptop at that time so it wasnt loud).

About a week after i moved i was in my kitchen talking with a friend the music was on in the living room and we could just about hear it in the kitchen, the next door neighbour leaned across the adjoining wall with a broom and started hammering it against my back door :eek:

I went out and asked her what the hell she thought she was doing to which she started screaming and shouting at me about how loud the music was, in the end i walked back indoors ignoring her.

A couple of weeks later her husband must have thought i was at home on my own, came round and pounded on my front door and started threatening me :eek: well next thing i knew my partner and 2 of his friends were stood behind me and the bloke ran back into his house!

Then i started getting letters through from the housing association complaints about banging and doors slamming i phoned up the housing officer and asked for details of the complaints and she started reeling off this list of times and dates the majority of which was when the house had been empty whilst i was away in london visiting friends I explained this and they put it down on record.

Like you i panicked every time the kids made a noise was constantly telling them to be quiet etc.

The complaints continued...

Then letters from the environmental health started to arrive :eek:

Again i phoned them and explained the situation, and they said they had to deal with every complaint that came in and that was what they were doing.

Mediation was arranged, at the next door neighbours request, i agreed to it but said that i wouldnt feel comfortable being sat in a room with them after the threats that i had received, they explained they could do what they called shuttle mediation.
The neighbour refused to do this she was adamant she wanted me to be there face to face with her!! :eek:

It all came to a head one day when my little girl who was about 2 at the time was playing out in the front garden (it was fenced with a locked gate) i could see her from where i was sat indoors but i wasnt visible to anyone outside that didnt know i was there, next thing the bloke from next door started screaming at my little girl for picking his flowers :mad: she was nowhere near his flowers at all! I went out there sent my little girl in and told him what i thought of him which probably wasnt the best idea but i was so angry!!

In the end i found an exchange i couldnt bare to live that way anymore, none of the neighbours knew that we were going and the day before we were due to actually move my neighbours phoned up the HA to make a complaint about a large group of people going into my house and making loads of noise!
At this point the house was completly packed up and we had arranged to stay with a friend the night before moving so we could be completly ready to go, the housing officer had been round and seen that the house itself wasnt able to be lived in as everything was packed.

She actually phoned me up and apologised after the last complaint she received from the neighbours she got in her car and drove to my house she said the journey in total took her 4minutes from leaving her office and actually driving there, she said the house was empty and there was nobody in sight (there was no way anybody could have disappeared off the street in 4 mins let alone a large group of people).

I put up with 18 months of hell because of my next door neighbours and threats of eviction on the grounds of anti social behaviour because of the neighbours constant complaints even though i wasnt doing anything wrong.

My advice to you is that you cant live your life constantly tip toeing around telling the kids to be quiet, they are kids and kids make noise! If you can and you feel comfortable doing so i would go down and talk to the woman face to face and ask exactly what noise is causing her problems and try and get is resolved civilly rather than the extent that mine got to.

Good luck!

yummymummy1987_2

Thank you for sharing your story im sorry you had to go through such a terrible time. Im quite fortunate that i dont feel intimitated in the slightest by her. She is a single mum of a 12 yr old who doesnt work and is actually more like a recluse barely goes out her neighbour who i mentioned earlier brings her shopping etc. Thats one thing i said to my mum im very lucky there is no one in our flats (new build) that would bother me other than offically iykswim?????? but that must have been terrible hearing him talk to ur daughter like that i would have found it so hard to keep calm. This is what i said to dp earlier about her saying that she didnt think we could talk otherwise going off the handle?????!! very bizzare situation to be in!!!

PrincessPlaty

yummymummy1987 wrote: »

Thank you for sharing your story im sorry you had to go through such a terrible time. Im quite fortunate that i dont feel intimitated in the slightest by her. She is a single mum of a 12 yr old who doesnt work and is actually more like a recluse barely goes out her neighbour who i mentioned earlier brings her shopping etc. Thats one thing i said to my mum im very lucky there is no one in our flats (new build) that would bother me other than offically iykswim?????? but that must have been terrible hearing him talk to ur daughter like that i would have found it so hard to keep calm. This is what i said to dp earlier about her saying that she didnt think we could talk otherwise going off the handle?????!! very bizzare situation to be in!!!

I know exactly what you mean! Good luck hun hope the situation gets sorted soon and as stress free as possible!

princeofpounds

This may be a case of someone being oversensitive, or it might not be. Don't be too quick to dismiss. Noise is a very subjective thing and dependent on where you are listening from.

For example, I lived in a flat in a mansion block. Very sturdily constructed, but it seems there was little sound insulation in the ceilings/floors despite the fact they were physically thick.

The people upstairs had a young child, and the child was doing nothing unreasonable. In fact, not that much that would appear loud in the same flat.

But in my flat, it was a nightmare. For instance, the child had some kind of little ball they would drop on the floor, maybe like a marble. Upstairs it probably sounded like a series of tapping sounds, but it resonated through the ceiling to sound exactly like an auctioneer's hammer in our house. To be woken at 6am on a Saturday by this was not pleasant!

And if the woman above walked around in heels, it was like a shire horse clip-clopping along, but normal shoes you couldn't hear at all.

Our neighbours to the side had a stereo, and the subwoofer was against the wall. I could physically see the vibrations of my shelving it was so loud. So I asked them to turn it down (they were quite good about it actually) and we eventually figured out that if it was away from the wall by just an inch, it could barely be heard.

Often the main problem in flats is that the flooring doesn't have proper changes in density that muffle sound (like a soft carpet on a hard floor), and they can even resonate to particular sounds if they are of a uniform density.

But it sounds like things are at a very early stage. The best approach you can take is to not worry about it unless it gets taken a step further. Then there will be a log of complaints, and if you are very co-operative about it you can work together to find out specifically what the problem is and reach a friendly solution. If you aren't doing anything abnormal then you don't have anything to worry about as reasonable activities can't be restricted.

People sometimes take genuine complaints very personally, when all the people who are complaining really want (personal vendettas aside) is for the noise to go down, and they would much rather have you get a rug or something than have to change your life.

Horasio

I blame bad building standards. Just doing normal things can sound so loud in flats.

Saying that we had a chavvy couple upstairs who let their kids run around all day and night. It was like living below a herd of elephants. They had loud music on as well. When we complained, they threatened us.

I have lived below people and their floorboards were so creaky.

If flats had better soundproofing and people took more care or responded reasonably if people were hearing loud noise, I think the problems would be a lot less.