Noisy neighbour

anoneemouse

PhylPho wrote: »

OP: there are no costs to you if court action isn't brought by you (which in this case, it isn't.)

There is, however, a downside: if you sell your home, you'll find there's some official form or other you'll get from the buyer's solicitor requiring you to disclose details of any inter-neighbour dispute.

Two quick caveats here:

1) I'm not a lawyer and:

2) It's been five years since I last moved house.

So maybe the form I'm thinking of isn't in circulation any more (but it certainly was when we moved in 2006, and in 2001: not only did we receive this document from our buyer's solicitor, the people whose property we were buying likewise received such a document from our solicitor.)

I don't know how possible it is to finesse or even overlook this disclosure requirement, and especially if, at the time of sale, your neighbour has either moved elsewhere himself or has mended his ways.

I'm aware of this and hence one of my reasons why I hope this won't have to go any further and the neighbour will just stop the noise before it comes to that. Though I would have thought the neighbour would also be aware of this and wouldn't want anything "down on the record" themselves. So that's one reason why I hope they will stop this, ie in case they come to sell their home themselves at some point and their "bad behaviour" instantly showed up.

If I somehow find I am able, after all, to move on to a better house and there is something like that on the record then I had already decided that I would have to tell the would-be buyers the details of this and they would have to work out for themselves the chances that the neighbour would choose to fall out with them as well.

anoneemouse

jonty03 wrote: »

Sorry to hear you're having this problem. I had a problem many years ago and reluctantly took my neighbours to court. I have no formal legal knowledge and am not advising, just pointing out my experiences.

I had to take private action with a solicitor, as Env Health kept dragging their heels (I later found out the Env Officer dealing with it was a friend of the neighbour!) I did win and all costs had to be paid by the neighbours but it was very distressing and I was later told that only 5% of private prosecutions for noise nuisance were successful (20 years ago). I had a very detailed log and very good representation.

However, my sis has recently had a huge problem with a neighbour who was successfully prosecuted by the police. This involved loud music at all times of day and night. Env Health wrote to them and told my sis to keep logs, and installed a recorder to gather evidence, this all takes time However, things escalated and she had to call the police on several occasions due to the aggressive actions of the neighbour. Eventually the police had the evidence they needed and the neighbour was taken to court by the CPS and served time.

Thankfully, not all cases are like this and, in my sisters case was quite extreme, but you do have to be aware that it is not an easy, nor a quick road to take. She had to keep her log accurately (dates, times etc) and record anything that was said by either side and how the noise make her or anyone else affected, feel. She also needed to send an update in to Env Health Officer dealing with it, regularly (initially, every couple of weeks, then weekly). They then updated her neighbours that they were still causing a nuisance. She had tried to talk to her neighbours on several occasions, without success, she put this in her log and what their reaction was.

She did not have to pay any costs as the CPS prosecuted but as with anything to do with the law, you have to put the questions to the right people.

In my opinion, noise nuisance may not necessarily have to be loud, but could possibly be something that constantly and unresonably intrudes on your daily life. I could be mistaken, but I think you used to be able to get 20 minutes free legal advice from a solicitor. It may be worth asking one what they consider your chances are.

HTH

Thank you for telling me that as to how it went for you.

It must have been so frustrating to have Environmental Health "taking sides" like that, ie because of a friendship. That was very unprofessional of the official concerned. They should have declared an interest and let a colleague deal with it in the circumstances. That way there would have been no bias. I suppose you only found out about the bias subsequently though?

In this case the person concerned is unlikely I feel to have any "influential" friends. Hopefully they won't be able to "pull strings" to their advantage then.

vusys1

anoneemouse wrote: »

Yes. It would appear to be some sort of alarm that is creating this noise.

same thing happened to me, they went on holiday,must have been a low battery warning beep,all day & all night :mad:

worst thing was the parents were checking the house but did nothing.....

so when I went on hols I set my alarm clock for 3am for every day I was away:)

beeches_2

We also have horrendous neighbours. We moved in 3 years ago and from day 1 they have played loud music day and night, they shout and argue in the street, they have hammered on our door threatening to kick it down, they bang on our walls complaining about our dog barking. They are too stupid to realise their noise is making our dog bark. We contacted the Police who passed us over to the Council Environmental Health who in turn gave us forms to fill out noting dates and times and what nature the noise was. Rather than send them back we made an appointment to see someone in the Environmental Health which we feel made a better impact with them. We had also listed every problem we had with the neighbours since moving in. Based on that information the Council gave us a monitor to record all the noise for 2 weeks. When they collected it it took another week for them to advise us that because of the late night noise they would be issuing the neighbours with a noise abatement notice. This they did, we heard nothing from the neighbours for a while until they once got drunk and shouted at us that dare we go to the council again they would kick our door down. Well, we did go to the Council again who once again sent them a letter reminding them of the noise abatement notice. This seemed to work. The son moved out (he was the worst one for the loud music) and 6 months on we have peace and quiet. We are in the process of suing the previous homeowners for not disclosing the noise but we have actually now sold the house. We had to disclose the noise abatement notice to the prospective buyers but because the son is no longer living at the house the noise is no longer an issue. Hope this helps.

gibby

We had a similar issue that the noise/music at night was beyond a joke.
Several polite requests & nothing happened.

What did work was going round at 2 in the morning, hammering on the door so loudly it woke the whole street up & shouting at the silly tart so that everyone in the street heard.

It did stop & she did complain to a few neighbours about it & they all told her to grow up.

Microwave_Dinner

We had awfully noisy neighbours where we used to live who regularly had parties at 2am (i.e. 2 or 3 times per week), would refuse to answer their door if you went to complain and then the next day would deny they'd made a sound.

We moved and now live in a blissfully quiet street. It's annoying we felt we had to do that but it got us out of the situation without the stress of taking things further. The local council there were useless although thankfully here they're very responsive to any rare noise complaints we've had to make (a now resolved issue with a house further down the road that was bothering everybody). It's a lottery though a) who you live next to and b) what the council do for you.