Anti social neighbours and harassment

dionysoss_94

Hello,

My partner and I recently moved into a property (we are renting through an agency). The property is considered an apartment, we are semi detached from the block of apartments. It pretty much looks like a coach house.

We have been having issues with 2 neighbours in particular about a number of things. One of them was the parking, our place is the only one that comes with a garage. The property was advertised as "Apartment with garage plus parking space". Even before we signed anything I double checked with he agency and they double checked with the Landlord about the parking spaces. We have been reassured that our 2 cars can fit next to the garage. (I have this in writing)

First week of us parking our cars next to our garage, I am greeted by a rude elderly neighbour that popped out through her bedroom window ( her bedroom window is adjacent to our garage). She said that we can not park here, as it is for emergency use only. I told her that, actually this is our parking spot and that if she wants to discuss things further she can talk to our agency. As I was getting ready to hand her our agency’s number, she said that this is her bedroom window and we can’t park there and closed the window on me. I contacted the agency immediately after just to be sure we were in the right.

 They have confirmed that we are in the right, and to ignore her, so we continue parking there.

Note: The parking has parking bays which have numbers belonging to each person in the block. We don't have that but there is enough space in front of our garage for 2 bays. Nobody can park there since they would be blocking our garage. So we are using that space to park our cars.

Over the next couple of months, we have got nothing but letters, council plans, anti social behaviour from her regarding the parking space. She and the other neighbour even went to spy into our garage and get an enforcement officer to investigate us, saying we are in breach of some clause ( garage conversion). Of course, the enforcement officer closed the case as there was no evidence of us converting the garage and no physical change to the garage.

She's gotten our solicitor's involved now. We got a letter through from them saying that ours cars are casing her inconvenience and distress...her parking spot is on the front side of of the block, not at the back like our garage is. So we were confused as to what inconvenience this represents to her?

We forward the solicitor's letters to our agency, who have been great so far. However, I just got off the phone with an agent from them saying that actually our landlord might be in breach of his lease regarding the parking spaces. They are waiting to hear back from him with more information and what are the solutions.

This has been stressing us out to no end.

Is there anything we can do as tenants?

I have filed up a harassment report regarding the 2 neighbours, not just for the parking issue, but also for the fact that the other neighbour has been filming and taking pictures of me and my partner getting out our cars. We have been informed by a younger couple living in the flat that she has been going around calling me racial slurs,( I am not English, my partner is). I have forwarded the report to the police as well as the agency.

Any help and advice would be much appreciate it!

theartfullodger

Follow excellent advice on CaB website - see...
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/housing/problems-where-you-live/

- plus over discrimination
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/housing/discrimination-in-housing/

No excuses for this.

(No offence) and/or consider moving. One of the advantages to renting, easier & quicker to move.

Best wishes & good luck.

dionysoss_94

theartfullodger said:

Follow excellent advice on CaB website - see...
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/housing/problems-where-you-live/

- plus over discrimination
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/housing/discrimination-in-housing/

No excuses for this.

(No offence) and/or consider moving. One of the advantages to renting, easier & quicker to move.

Best wishes & good luck.

Thank you for the link! 

We would ideally not want to come to that, we have considered it and if worse comes to worst, we will move.

boxer234

What a nightmare some people just like to moan.  If your parking is effecting their health how do they cope with real problems.  I second moving.  I know your not in the wrong but can you park elsewhere for a quiet life ? 

dionysoss_94

boxer234 said:

What a nightmare some people just like to moan.  If your parking is effecting their health how do they cope with real problems.  I second moving.  I know your not in the wrong but can you park elsewhere for a quiet life ? 

I know! We actually confronted the woman taking the pictures, I kid you not, she actually said to us "You can't prove that"!she kept mentioning the fumes of my car (1L automatic) is causing her difficulties in breathing. She also mentioned she's under some disability protection act as if that's got anything to do with her behaviour?! I feel like I am living in a Spanish telenovela.  We can park on the street, but it's so full of cars, so finding a space would be difficult. We are just gonna wait and see what the agency says since they did advertise it with 2 parking spaces.

Wantabeautifulhouse

Playing devil's advocate here but I wouldn't like it if a car parked directly outside of my window. Are you sure it is a parking bay? All other bays are marked but not yours? Why? I understand that you have right of way over it to access your garage but I think the letting agents may have overstepped their mark here. Easy way to find out is to download the deeds and see if you/your landlord have rights to the space. My guess is that you have the right of way but not to park. If I was the woman, I would also be livid if your parked immediately outside my bedroom window. 

HampshireH

Wantabeautifulhouse said:

Playing devil's advocate here but I wouldn't like it if a car parked directly outside of my window. Are you sure it is a parking bay? All other bays are marked but not yours? Why? I understand that you have right of way over it to access your garage but I think the letting agents may have overstepped their mark here. Easy way to find out is to download the deeds and see if you/your landlord have rights to the space. My guess is that you have the right of way but not to park. If I was the woman, I would also be livid if your parked immediately outside my bedroom window. 

A much quicker solution than waiting for the LL to come back to the agency

user1977

HampshireH said:

Wantabeautifulhouse said:

Playing devil's advocate here but I wouldn't like it if a car parked directly outside of my window. Are you sure it is a parking bay? All other bays are marked but not yours? Why? I understand that you have right of way over it to access your garage but I think the letting agents may have overstepped their mark here. Easy way to find out is to download the deeds and see if you/your landlord have rights to the space. My guess is that you have the right of way but not to park. If I was the woman, I would also be livid if your parked immediately outside my bedroom window. 

A much quicker solution than waiting for the LL to come back to the agency

Indeed, I wouldn't rely on the agency necessarily knowing what they're talking about. Easiest answer for them is just to tell the OP that they're in the right, rather than deal with the possibility of the landlord having let something they're not entitled to.

canaldumidi

I suggest you do some research yourself regarding what parking spot(s) go with the property.

Pay £3 + £3 here to the Land Registry to download the leasehold property title and leasehold title Plan. The Plan will make clear the boundary of the property, and that may include the parking area.

Or the parking area might not be covered by the titlePlan, but may be granted as a right (as opposed to ownership) which is granted in the lease itself. The lease is a longer document usually also held by the Land registry, that you can request from them (paper copy) using form OC2 for £7 here. You'll need the Title Number, but you get that from the leaseold title referred to earlier.

With luck, one or other of those documents will prove which parking spots belong to your property.

yksi

Owners are often stupid. A friend of mine owns a converted flat (originally a large house) and for weeks one of the tenants from another flat was always parking in her space. He was absolutely insistent that it was "his" and belonged to his landlord. He produced a tenancy agreement showing her space marked as being included. My friend then produced the title showing the space belonging to her, followed by her leasehold documents also showing the space as hers. The tenant did not agree that her documents were correct and his were not, and refused to move. Owners can certainly screw up in creating leases for tenants and that's what happened here. She had to approach her freeholder to send a "polite notice" to the owner of the flat advising them to get in contact with the tenant and stop them parking there.

It's very possible that either your landlord is wrong, or the old biddy has been wrongly informed, as to whether those parking spaces belong to the flat you're living in. Or whether they're even parking spaces to begin with. One of the Land Registry docs will tell you.

dionysoss_94

Wantabeautifulhouse said:

Playing devil's advocate here but I wouldn't like it if a car parked directly outside of my window. Are you sure it is a parking bay? All other bays are marked but not yours? Why? I understand that you have right of way over it to access your garage but I think the letting agents may have overstepped their mark here. Easy way to find out is to download the deeds and see if you/your landlord have rights to the space. My guess is that you have the right of way but not to park. If I was the woman, I would also be livid if your parked immediately outside my bedroom window. 

I completely understand that, however a part of me thinks why would you even think moving into a place where’s your bedroom window is adjacent to the neighbours garage? If we start using the garage for our cars, that’s going to be extremely noisy, we are in and out constantly because of our jobs. I just know the next complaint is going to be we are too noisy