Noisy neighbour - what next?

[doofdoofdneighbour]

In the last 12 months, a new neighbour has really been spoiling our enjoyment of our garden.

They aren't on our street (our house backs onto their house), so I don't know them to speak to, but as soon as it's mild enough to go near the garden, they sit outside, playing loud music for literally 8-10 hours at a time and smoking weed.

The music is so loud I can hear it indoors with our doors and windows shut.

We have only had one interaction with them, which was last summer when we could hear screaming coming from their house. We went upstairs to look out of our window (so we could see over the fence) and could see a man hitting a woman. He saw us looking and yelled at us to fuck off and close our windows. My husband told him it was a family area and he needed to calm down. He told my husband to fuck off, but it did quieten down. We didn't have enough information to make a police report.

I believe (but am not certain) they are council tenants.

For the reasons above regarding our previous interactions, I'm not convinced that approaching them and asking nicely to turn their music down / wear headphones will help.

What's the most sensible first step? Make a council noise complaint (would this count as a neighbour dispute if we ever decided to move?)? Make a police report about the weed?

I'd make a complaint to council regarding noise and anti social behaviour (weed smoking). Reporting to police would be a waste of your time and energy.

I sympathise. We are in a similar situation ourselves, but without the violence aspect.

The Police won't care about the weed, and the Council will unlikely be interested in that on it's own.

If you do make a complaint to the council about the noise, you will need to keep a diary, write statements and (certainly in our council) they also needed statements from other neighbours as it has to affect the community rather than one person. It will also be declarable if you move that you have made a complaint.

One of the neighbours at the back of us made a complaint and we were asked to make a statement which we declined, but I will clarify if we have to declare a complaint that we are aware of, or just if we had made one and answer any questions honestly.

I know it's really shitty, but as we were planning on moving in a year or two anyway, we have decided to bring this forward and sell up and move on instead.

Please do tell the potential buyers the neighbour situation when you move - think how you feel now, it’s not fair to do that to the next family.

We won't lie if asked, but neighbours are always a risk when you move. Who knows that we won't get stung on our next move anyway?

If you see dv again then please consider reporting to the police.

We did consider it but at the time didn't even know the address and hadn't seen the incident clearly enough to say for certain what had happened.

It feels like there's no way to reasonably complain about a neighbour's antisocial behaviour without it being a black mark against you should you ever want to move in the future.

The children can't use our garden in the summer because of the smell of weed.