Posting here for traffic as I need some advice.
We live in a flat below a council tenant neighbour, we own our flat. We have the lower levels so we have full ownership of the garden. She has been there for decades. She often plays incredibly loud music and our next door neighbours can’t stand it so have filed noise complaints against her, we previously didn’t mind it. We fell out for a stupid reason (not our fault) 6 months ago, in response she slammed the door at 4am for 2 weeks in a row so I submitted a council noise complaint and a few weeks later one about her music.
We’ve come into some money so decided it’s finally time to move to a bigger place. I’m conscious we have these two noise complaints on record, alongside a police report when she verbally abused me in the shared hallway. Obviously I realise that’s all stupid now but we didn’t expect to be selling so soon.
The current situation is she’s clearly got some kind of comms from the council re the music, as she is taking the stance of ‘how dare us/ our kids make noise in the garden if she’s not allowed to make noise.’ Which presents itself as every time we spend time in the garden, she opens her window and scream’s expletives at us and our young children, eg ‘your f*ing children should be in a cage.’ Pretty unpleasant stuff. She then blares music at full volume, with speakers pointing out of the window at us in the garden. This has happened 4-5 times in the last 7 days. She’s completely unhinged it seems, my kids are 3 and 5 so they are not quiet but they are not awfully loud and we aren’t in the garden that much due to school and other plans.
The council noise man called me last week to explain they will send a random person round every few days to try and catch the music in action, which feels a bit like trying to shoot fish in a barrel.
My husband thinks we should just ignore her, say the music has stopped and ask if they can cancel our previous complaint. I think we could easily lay a trap of the kids playing in the garden, and invite the noise guy round to catch her in action, with a view that I’d rather get the noise complaint resolved before we are under offer and it comes up. Additionally I’m sure it’s in our lease that we have a legal right to enjoy our garden, and we could go down that avenue too. Let alone the constant verbal abuse at two small children.
Any advice?? My husband thinks I just want her to be punished as I have a strong sense of justice and it wouldn’t benefit us to follow it up but I think it’s an open case that we could potentially resolve. He thinks we can say we don’t have a complaint but I think it’s so tied in with next doors complaint that it will still exist on file and we will have to declare. What to do?!
I’m not expecting her to be moved on as I believe that is extremely hard. I understand that we will have to declare the noise complaints and police reports but as they are a little while ago now, husband is hoping they won’t seem as imperative to buyers as if we were pursuing action now.