Noisy neighbours

[JamesAC]

You are entitled, in Common Law, to the "peaceful enjoyment" of your home. It is not reasonable that you should suffer the noise nuisance of your neighbours at any time at all. Day-to-day domestic sounds are not a noise nuisance (washing machine, Hoover ..) but thumping music is.

Write to your neighbours, and explain that the music they are playing is too noisy, and is causing you and your wife distress. Ask them to turn it down, or use head phones. Write to their landlord, or the Agent.

Keep a diary, of every instance of noise nuisance; the time of day, the nature of the nuisance, and the effect it had on you (could not sleep, disrupted your study, spoiled your enjoyment of watching a film on the telly ...).

Get independent witnesses to the nuisance, if you can. Neighbour on the other side, across the road, postman, pizza delivery bloke.

Contact your Local Authority. Some LA's take very positive action, and will send out a couple of officers to witness the nuisance. If the officers determine that there is a nuisance, then they will serve a Notice on your neighbours; if they continue, then they will have their equipment seized and they will be prosecuted.

It is crazy to think of sound-proofing your home. You have not done anything wrong. You neighbours have!

All the best

 

[buggi]

You are entitled, in Common Law, to the "peaceful enjoyment" of your home. It is not reasonable that you should suffer the noise nuisance of your neighbours at any time at all. Day-to-day domestic sounds are not a noise nuisance (washing machine, Hoover ..) but thumping music is.

Write to your neighbours, and explain that the music they are playing is too noisy, and is causing you and your wife distress. Ask them to turn it down, or use head phones. Write to their landlord, or the Agent.

Keep a diary, of every instance of noise nuisance; the time of day, the nature of the nuisance, and the effect it had on you (could not sleep, disrupted your study, spoiled your enjoyment of watching a film on the telly ...).

Get independent witnesses to the nuisance, if you can. Neighbour on the other side, across the road, postman, pizza delivery bloke.

Contact your Local Authority. Some LA's take very positive action, and will send out a couple of officers to witness the nuisance. If the officers determine that there is a nuisance, then they will serve a Notice on your neighbours; if they continue, then they will have their equipment seized and they will be prosecuted.

It is crazy to think of sound-proofing your home. You have not done anything wrong. You neighbours have!

All the best

+1

You don't have to put up with this and they are not allowed to play music by law until 2am in the morning. You have asked them to turn it down more than once, which is one more time that you should have to ask and telling you he needs to play it to hear it is bollocks ,he can use headphones. phone the environmental health and complain. They are relying on your good nature to be ably to carry on selfishley. so stop being good natured and phone the council

ps, you will probably find that you can get out of your tenancy if they previously knew about these neighbours.

 

[slowmotion]

Ultimately, the people who are going to police this kind of behaviour are the Local Authority. Get them involved now, not later. There is no point in going to them in six months with personal anecdotes. Pick up the phone tomorrow morning. I've been here...

 

[thomas]

Talk to the Environmental Health people at your Local Authority,

From the area the house is in, and the way it looks, I think it might be rented. I know I have a clause in my contract that says I can not run a business from home that involves many people / parcels or disturbance to other neighbors, I wonder if they have the same.

the trouble with any action such as the above or talking to environmental health is that they'll have a fair guess it's me, the neighbours the other side of them don't seem to notice.

I'm breaking my contract atm...I think anyway. pretty sure it says no hi-hi, etc, after 11 or something, but I've got music on. No chance next door could hear it though, but is is likely that if rented there will be a noise clause that can be enforced. However, most landlords probably wouldn't care too much unless they are getting bothered by the council too.

Friends of mine got sent a letter by the council saying that if they carried on making too much noise they would be fined quite a large sum of money. Bloody students

 

[punkypossum]

It's definitely worth contacting Environmental Health, but they are unlikely to get involved in anything that happens before 11pm. Either way, start keeping a diary of exactly when it happens, how long for, what kind of noise, etc. I know it can be a pain, especially if it's daily, but you'll need it if this ever goes further. We get this sort of stuff quite a lot at work and tbh, getting anything done about it is quite difficult - especially if it's happening mainly during the day, but keep recording the incidents and you might be able to get Env Health to put recording equipment into your property to prove that the noise is above acceptable levels.

 

[Crankarm]

Ring up the Revenue and tell them your neighbours are running a cash in hand business from a residential property. Also tell the local council the same. If as you say it goes on all day and they have told you they need to hear the music for work then ring up the benefits people who will be onto them if they are claiming anything without declaring earnings. Any indication of drugs? If so ring Crimestoppers.

Plus do all the other stuff mentioned above. Drill into a few walls which seperate them and you with a hammer drill at 7:30am .

If all this fails give notice to your landlord that you wish to quit the tenancy due to issues of noise. He or they may well be aware that noise was the reason the last tenants left and did not disclose the problem to you prior to you taking on the tenancy so they could be in breach of their covenants of the tenancy agreement. Anyway they may get involved and threaten the other landlord with legal action should they lose you as a tenant and therefore suffer financial loss.

Good luck.

 

[slowmotion]

Chuffing Heck! Crankarm comes out with all guns blazing....! All excellent advice.

 

[Black Sheep]

I'm in touch with the noise team at environmental health

will try and keep you posted.

 

[Telemark]

We had similar problems ... not sure what the law says in your part of the country.

You say "there seem to be 4 people living there" - if they are not related, the house may come under the regulations for "houses of multiple occupancy" or HMO. In Scotland this is a house/flat with 3 or more unrelated people, for England, have a look at google, here is one link. These regulations are to a) stop slum landlords packing too many people into a property under sub-standard conditions and b) to make sure neighbours are not adversely affected. We have been able to resolve a bad noise problem (being woken up almost nightly for periods by students playing thump-thump music, shouting & singing & playing guitar at all hours, and playing computer games - loudly). They couldn't care less, we talked to them first, then their landlords, then the HMO people. After 2 years(!) of recording incidents in a notebook and getting the environmental health noise team to witness the noise, the landlord lost the HMO license for the property. The previous year he just got a slap on the wrist.
You should be able to find out from your council whether the property is registered as an HMO. We had to attend a hearing and state our case (after writing a formal letter of complaint before the annual renewal deadline for the HMO, which is attached to lamp posts or fences near the front door for a few weeks).

In Scotland we have a landlords register, i.e,, every landlord must have their contact details publically available (regardles of whether the flat is a HMO or not). England seems to be running a little behind here. You should be able to trace the landlord if they have registered. If the house is rented, the rental agreement probably has some wording on antisocial behaviour and its definition, i.e., "the tenant must not cause distress to neighbours" or similar. If you can find out who the landlord is, it is in the landlord's interest that their tenants behave themselves, at least in SCotland they are actually responsible for taking action if their tenants behave unreasonably, not sure about the law south of the border.

ANd thirdly, get witnesses (env. health should have a dedicated noise team that come out during all hours to witness and/record/measure noise levels). They can also confiscate "noise making equipment" which the offenders will then have to pay to retrieve. Keep a note book and write down all incidences, with start & end times, description of the noise AND how it affects you - lack of sleep, stress, tired, upset etc. This may be important if you need to provide evidence, which you will most likely be asked for at some point. If this is backed up by the odd witnessed incident, your chances of being taken seriously rise dramatically.

www.nfh.org.uk ("Neighbours from hell") also has some interesting suggestions.

If you want any more details away from a public forum, get in touch via the personal messages.
Good luck!

T

 

[Black Sheep]

I've a feeling they own the house, it was bought in 2009 but i know little more than that
they own a cat is my reason for assuming they own it - most tenancy agreements i've seen forbid animals.

I want to throw pumpkins at their windows, set fireworks off on their roof and various other bizare methods of retaliation which I know I shouldn't and won't because that won't solve it.

I keep calling the noise team in the city council, but they are often busy so can't always come to witness it.

It's stopping me from being able to work and Mrs Blacksheep is on nights again, so it affects her sleep.

 

[SavageHoutkop]

Could you perhaps write them a polite letter - especially given that Mrs Blacksheep is on nights and you can't work.
The 'needing it on for work' is junk, he can turn it down or use headphones.

We had our neighbour below us (block of flats) also mixing music or something, I couldn't hear any of it just his bass line. After a while that just drives you mad as it's so repetitive. We put a note under his door and no probs since.

Of course yours might not be willing to budge in which case you could call in the cavalry, but I'd always like to be asked first politely if it were me who was upsetting a neighbour, rather than get a letter from (say) environments agency. Of course your view is you have asked but perhaps his view is he has turned it down (just not enough for you, which he might not realise).

 

[Black Sheep]

Letter has gone round, I've been round a few times and the time he answered is the answer that is posted earlier in the thread

The council noise team are aware, have sent an official letter and no change, hopefully someone will be here soon to have a listen, although he does seem to have stopped for now.

The volume has never got less at any point.

 

[Arch]

I've a feeling they own the house, it was bought in 2009 but i know little more than that
they own a cat is my reason for assuming they own it - most tenancy agreements i've seen forbid animals.

I dunno, my current one doesn't, and neither did the last....

I hope you get a good result. We had some trouble with a venue over the road (it often had wedding receptions on a Saturday night with live bands, and we could hear every song), and my downstairs neighbour made a fuss and it ended up as an offical 'keep the music down, or no licence next year', and it's been ok since. I know you don't have that particular leverage, but keep at it.

 

[Black Sheep]

Were it an actual company I'd be a little less worried about retribution.

I have to admit that earlier I'd got so frustrated with it that I slapped the wall three times with a trainer and got three thumps back

but the music volume went down to only being audible if you turn everything off and listen very carefully

I can kind of still hear it as a result of having been hearing it all day but a couple of days of this volume and I'll have it out of my head

might have got the message across.

 

[Jaguar]

learn to become more tolerant.

You've never lived next to people like this then?