Just a rant really. We’ve lived in our 50’s semi detached house for about 14 years, and for most of that time our adjoining neighbours were a quiet old couple. They moved on and sold the house to a private landlord who is now renting it out. A Romanian family moved in this summer, they are a couple with four children under 12.
They’re a pleasant family but super sociable and it’s becoming completely intolerable. It’s a very small house, two bedrooms and a box room, small bathroom, small kitchen and small sitting room, and they always have company, aunties and uncles and cousins knocking about - there’s always at least 4 extra adults and 4 extra children added in the mix. I have no idea how they all fit overnight.
They have no volume control. It is now 23:45 and it’s like all the adults are socialising by shouting at full volume at each other. They’re in and out and slamming doors and spilling out into the garden. That’s before they get started on the karaoke machine. During the day the kids climb up on the fence and sit on the top of it and basically bother us if we are in the garden, or if not they look into our house and comment on everything we own that they can see.
DH and I have both been round several times to ask them to keep it down. The parents don’t speak any English so the kids have to translate, in the end I resorted to using Google translate to write this down and hand it to them -
“It is very difficult to cope with some of the noise we can hear. We have lived here peacefully for many years and have never heard much through the walls from neighbours until you moved in. We've been trying to just cope with it, and get on with it, but realise that if we don't tell you, you won't know we can hear anything or how distressing it is becoming.
This is not a complaint about general playing and family noise - we understand that you have a large family and limited space, children will make noise, babies cry, and that is really no problem. We are struggling because we can hear everything and it's making us miserable - loud shouting of conversations, screaming, slamming, singing. This is often for long periods, very early in the morning, or late into the evening.
We were all woken at 6:40am today by the noise. It sounded like a lot of people just living life but shouting to each other at the top of their voices. There is still noise now at 10pm and the children can't sleep. Some of our family are very unwell and are often stuck here housebound and unable to escape the noise, which sounds like it's in the next room.
We are just politely asking please limit the noise where you can, and now you know how much we can hear, consider the time of day or night. We would be very grateful. In turn if we are disturbing you in any way, please let us know. “
This was two or three weeks ago. They apologised but the noise has just carried on and nothing has really changed. It’s always going to be like this with the amount of people they have in a tiny space. I’m getting to the point where it’s affecting my mental health, the kids aren’t sleeping well and it’s affecting them getting up in the morning. Just wanted to put out there the absolute misery of shitty inconsiderate neighbours, even though they are pleasant enough people the sheer lack of consideration is making me hate them.