Front garden of adjoining house

Penguin_

Good morning all

I am wondering if anyone can advise of anything I can do with my neighbours front garden? We are both mid terraced & share a path that comes up the front of the houses & we have small front gardens either side of the path, ours is paved & theirs is grassed. They aren't the worst neighbours in the world, have 2 young children & to be honest apart from this issue, we don't have many major gripes with them (well apart from their kids throwing stones from our front garden at the parked cars outside but that's another matter). 

Their front garden is horrible, over grown (they cut it once a year) but the rubbish in it is awful. We have 2 coloured recycling sacks here (one is for cardboard & the other for mixed plastics & metal), a glass waste bin, a paper bin & a food waste bin. A few months ago, they had too much cardboard so they put a load of it in a bag for life & left it on the kerb for collection but as it rained over night the cardboard got wet & it wasn't collected, the neighbour has just thrown this bag for life back into their front garden & its been left there since. The same happened when a bag of general waste wasn't accepted, because it was in a non council bag & this has now been pecked open by birds & as a result is all over the front of their garden. There are old pillows, bags of food waste, old hamster cages just strewn in the garden & it is really annoying me as we try to keep our front garden as clean as can be. To give you an idea of the neighbours, about 5 weeks ago I was leaving the house & they were just going into their house, their son (possibly 5) had stepped in dog mess & the dad told him to take his shoes off & leave them on the doorstep so the mess could dry. 5 weeks later, the trainers are have now been chucked into the garden!

I don't know the landlord or have details of any management agency, so I cannot talk to them directly.

Would the local authority do anything about this as it is a private rental property?

user1977

I can't see the local authority being interested unless it's posing some sort of environmental nuisance (e.g. if there were rats taking advantage of the food waste). People are generally allowed to have untidy gardens.

Penguin_

Thanks, I thought as much - we did have to complain to them about the food waste bags just being chucked into the garden (& not put in the food waste bin) last year as there were rats in the garden. 

Ramouth

I would offer to tidy it up for them.  Something along the lines of “I’m planning a trip to the top with some stuff and wondered if I could take the rubbish from your front garden for you?”  Once you have permission to clear the rubbish I’m sure they wouldn’t object if you trimmed the grass too.

It obviously isn’t important to them so this seems like the best option to achieve what you want without causing difficult relations.  Once it’s tidy it might be kept tidy.  I did a load of weeding on our old lane and was surprised to see that some of my neighbours than started doing a bit too and tidying up their front yards.

Mardle

My local council have on online form for reporting rubbish in gardens so check your local council's website. We had problems with our neighbour's front & back gardens. After we reported it we were contacted by a council officer who told us the neighbours had been told to clear it within 6 weeks. He rang again a few weeks later to check if it had been cleared.

If you can't find anything on the council website try contacting your local councillors as they may be able to point you in the right direction. 

canaldumidi

Tea and cake and a chat!

But generally people can live as they like(democracy an'all that) though Environmental Health can intervene if there's a health hazard, excessive noise etc. See the council website.

You could download the land registry title (£3 here) to find the owner's name and address (though sometimes the address will be the property itself if the ower/landlord hasn;t updated the LR).

Or as Ramouth suggested above, offer to help tidy up yourself. Do you have a lawn mower.........?