Neighbours Grrr

[Globalti]

Have a look at the Neighbours from Hell website, you'll get lost of support on there as well. The good thing here is that all of you are suffering so the Council will be forced to take action.

We moved house when violent drug dealers moved in next door and the all-night barking dogs and parties got too much for us. The house was re-sold three times in the ensuing four years.

 

[ColinJ]

We moved house when violent drug dealers moved in next door and the all-night barking dogs and parties got too much for us. The house was re-sold three times in the ensuing four years.

Isn't it a legal requirement to mention that kind of thing when putting a house up for sale?

 

[Rohloff_Brompton_Rider]

Whilst common sense says the local authority and housing association have to act, this is unfortunately not true. They are just over worked people in offices who have no idea what's going on.

They can only realistically know what is happening by evidence being presented in a way that can be used to pursue the matter correctly. Remember this could go to court and as such run up significant costs for the housing association, they are only likely to do this with the correct type of evidence that they feel is adequate to end in the accused being found to be at fault.

Sorry, not what you want to hear, but it is the only way forward and is not done quickly.

The only quick way to deal with this is to ring the local environment out of hours noise pollution duty line - that's if your local authority has one. They will bring an acoustic measuring device and record the readings and after several visits will advise the local authority to issue warnings then fines then confiscation orders....well that's how it was explained to us when our neighbour kept barking like a dog (yep that's right) behind our fence late at night for hours at a time.

 

[Globalti]

Isn't it a legal requirement to mention that kind of thing when putting a house up for sale?

It is a legal requirement that you declare any dispute with your neighbour. When we filled in the declaration we were quite happy to sign it because we'd never actually had any disagreement with them; we'd been very careful to avoid that, for the sake of our physical safety more than anything else.

 

[Hill Wimp]

If i remember rightly when i sold my last house 2 years ago i had to declare any issues with neighbours in a questionnaire from the solicitors so i think it may be a legal requirement.
Quite what would happen if you didn't though and there was an issue i'm not sure about that.

 

[Globalti]

As I wrote above.... if there's been a dispute you are supposed to declare it. If your neighbours are just dangerous antisocial scum, there's no box to tick.

 

[Longshot]

You have to make your complaint to the HA or their managing agents. All of you that are affected need to do so, politely but firmly. You must all do this every single time it happens. The property manager doesn't have time to have to deal with four or five calls from people (who are politely and calmly explaining the latest recurrence of the problem) on a daily basis. I have no doubt that they will have sympathy for your plight and, by being reasonable with them in your approach, you will elicit a far better response from them. Get their sympathy but take up their time. I can think of no way surer to increase your odds of a successful result (outside of the involvement of police/environmental health).

You also need to use the phrase "quiet enjoyment". This is something that your Landlord will be obliged to provide you with during the term of your lease - you'll find it if you check your lease. It doesn't actually relate to noise despite the wording but covers all manner of nuisances, etc.