Need advice on nightmare neighbour

[MoominPig]

I’m looking for a bit of help, I did have another thread on here and got some fantastic advice but the situation has changed slightly.

We have been living in our house for 7 years. It’s a end terrace town house. After a year of us living here the council moved in a single mum and her children to the house next door. The noise problem started not long after. The children used to go to their dads on the weekends so the mum used to throw all night parties almost every weekend. It was a nightmare as my husband works 12 hour shifts and quite often works both Saturday and Sunday.

Myself and neighbours all complained to the council environmental health but we were told they couldn’t deal with it as it needed to be handed by the council tenants complaints department. We are frequently in touch with them and nothing ever happens.

Social services took the children away last year, they still haven’t returned to the house. Unfortunately this has meant the all night parties are now more frequent most weeks 3-4 times per week and carry on to 4/5 and occasionally 6am.

After my last post myself and the neighbours spoke again with Environmental Health and sent them pages and pages worth of noise diary’s and complaints and begged them to take the case on. They sent a letter to next door to start proceedings against her. We finally thought we were getting somewhere after 6 years.

That weekend after the letter had been sent she had another party that went onto 4:30am. I spoke to the council first thing on the Monday. I was told that before they can issue a noise abatement order they need to whiteness the noise for themselves but they don’t have a out of hours department. After some back and forth with them they have suggested we apply directly to the courts ourselves for a noise abatement order.

All the neighbours that have been affected have agreed we need to do this and will split the court cost between us. They will all happily give evidence if needed BUT I’ve been appointed to approach the courts to apply for a summons to be issued. I need to give evidence and noise diary’s to actually get a hearing date.

I’ve got 6 years worth of complaints but I just don’t know what to say. I need to be prepared before I go as I struggle in these situations I just don’t know where to start or what to include.

Can anyone give me any pointers as I’ve been trying to write something for days and I’m having a complete mental block.

Have you tried posting over on legal
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/legal_matters
for advice .

I'm so sorry ,it sounds like an awful situation and the absence of help you've had sounds dire .

Have you tried a local councillor for advice ?

I’ve not posted in legal but I will do that thanks.

On my previous thread a few posters suggested we get in touch with our local MP, I did that but unfortunately I’ve not heard anything back.

Actually myself and neighbours contacted several departments at the council for help but not one of us have received a single response. We were supposed to hear back within 14 days, so we then sent follow up emails / letters and still nothing.

Practically,
i'd think that this may be the time Citizens Advice might come into their own?
For us, the adviser there helped us write our petition for an ASBO against our neighbour and supported us as a group when it was taken to the Magistrates Court.
Ruling was in our favour, council moved the tenant (possibly to create havoc elsewhere? we dont know, just relieved we had peace restored).
Good luck OP.
Oh,btw, have you contacted your local MP? They're always good to raise their own profile too (even tho ours was affiliated to a Party id never support, just that sometimes needs must!) In fairness hed got a lot of weight to throw behind our petition. YES! I'd reckon and advise that your local MP would come first in getting help.Sorry, it came back as I was typing
Good luck.Anti social neighbours are the absolute living hell pits

Are you able to get copies of the noise diaries previously sent to the council and incorporate those? (Assuming you didn't take copies yourself). This would mean you didn't have to start from scratch again with those.
Could the CAB help you to prepare something?

It’s disgusting that you’ve been forced to do this yourself. The council should have an obligation to be fighting this on your behalf, and they should be paying for if she’s their tenant.

With regards as to what you need to say you just need to describe how much it is affecting your life.

We got a noise abatement order on neighbours - environmental health put recording equipment in for a weekend.
The housing association they were with attempted to evict them but the police blocked it because her son was coming out of prison and they needed to know where to find him.....
We sold our flat, admitting all the problems because we'd had environmental health involved and the noise abatement order.
What does she say when you try and talk to her?
I gave up engaging with my neighbours because they were basically bastards!!
I'm really sorry you're going through this. I'd be asking environmental health for recording equipment,

Actually Citizens Advice is a bloody fantastic idea. The neighbours decided against a solicitor so any help in this would be invaluable.

I’ve got 6 years worth of evidence that’s just my own records without neighbours letters. Basically every single time I’ve contacted the council complaints department by phone letter or email I’ve kept a log on the pc of it. I’ve got noise diary’s going back 6 years too.

The council have been utterly useless the best advice we’ve had from them was actually to take it to court ourselves. Apparently noise diary’s and recordings are not enough evidence so they can’t proceed.
After Environmental Health wrote a letter to her, that weekend she had a party in her garden not joking here but they had a full on DJ decks at the bottom of her garden. My DH took a video but still “lack of evidence apparently” its a case of banging our heads against a brick wall.

This whole situation is just a absolute nightmare for us all. The most depressing thing is we live in what was a new build community 7 years ago. Based around a retirement village with a end of life complex on site actually in front of our house. The majority of the people living round here are all retired elderly couples we are one of the very few with a youngish family. So we still can’t understand why they would put a young girl in her 20s here. Especially when she was evicted from her previous home.

BlueUggs What a absolute nightmare for you, can I ask did you have any issues selling your house? We do love it here but we are seriously considering selling up as it’s a living nightmare.

I would try and go to your MPs surgery and talk face to face. There should be details on their web site. Also I would be contacting your local Councillors daily (and all the neighbours too). They must be able to get the Council to do something. It's one of their tenants!

I agree, escalate this to your MP. We had a problem with a local pub, and one of the neighbours had a noise meter installed by Environmental Health; it didn't cost them anything.

I think it's possible that a local councillor might help ,where the MP hasn't ( bigger fish to fry ) .

Some solocitors firms will offer a free consultation ,might be worth ringing round ?

I do wish you all the best .

PS article in local press ????Aimed at prompting env health/HA/ local council into action .

This is based on OLD advice but it might be worth seeing if it's still relevant to your council but where we lived if a group of residents started a petition it was prioritised for at the council and was looked at more seriously as a complaint from an individual would have been.

Don't suppose you are willing to say which council it is?

BTW - how about investigating how to make a complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman about the councils refusal to deal with this issue.

Local Authorities have a duty to investigate complaints like yours and a duty to take action if it's a statutory nuisance. It's not something they can chose not to investigate.

The noise you describe sounds very much like it would meet the criteria of being a statutory nuisance. It's not an occasional party and it sounds really loud.

In the mean time carry on keeping records and recording the noise and don't stop reporting it to the LA. Get your neighbours involved to too.

I'm not right up to date with this subject so you need to double check I'm not talking bollux 😂😂.