Neighbours smoke alarm going off multiple times a day

[Iridescentdragon]

I live about a scatter flat. It's a one bedroom flat but there are usually 4 people staying there. They're obviously drug users, get visitors often shouting through the window about crack and vallies. They've been caught on cctv testing all nearby car doors at night and currently have a back door and two back windows smashed and boarded up.

Anyway, for the past three weeks or so, the smoke alarm has been going off most days. I realise they can be sensitive, our next door neighbour sets his off cooking A LOT. Yesterday downstairs it was going for about an hour, I went and walked around to check, they were in the garden talking with the back door open. Late last night my son said it happened again, they were outside with their door open but when he opened his window he could smell smoke.

I've emailed a report to a local housing officer but what else should I be doing? 101 is just for non emergency police, 999 seems excessive if it's happening every day but I'm concerned. I've seen them barely able to stay upright, I'm worried they'll have passed out and we're all ignoring it, thinking it's a false alarm again.

I would be ringing 999 every time. One, you have no idea if it’s a real emergency or not, so err on the side of yes, given your flat is attached to them. I’d also report to LA or whoever as well. Two, nothing will discourage them from using this squat for smoking dope more than police and fire turning up 3 times a day. Hopefully this moves them on somewhere else.

That said, I used to live in flats that had this centralised automatic fire alarm system. If anyone in any of the flats set off a smoke alarm (burning toast or whatever), the alarms went off in all 20 flats, with a loud screeching message “Evacuate the building!! Fire has been detected!!” Ear splittingly loud. And the fire brigade was called automatically. We had one guy who couldn’t cook and did this every week, at least once. Everyone would end up standing around outside in the rain and the fire brigade would have to go through and clear each flat to check for fire or anyone trapped, at all hours of the day and night. Burning toast man would like hide behind a tree embarrassed because he bloody did it again.

Email crime stoppers with as much info as you can. Any car reg plates, descriptions of people
probably collecting intel if they’re dealing…
if they’re cooking up crack then there is also a significant risk of a fire

Have you any way of finding out who the owner of the flat is? I’m sure they would want to know the risk their property is under.

I would contact your local fire station and ask for advice. As you're in flats they'll hopefully take it quite seriously.

It's all council properties. They're in the one bedroom ground floor flat and my family is in the maisonette above. I'll hopefully hear from the housing officer tomorrow and in the meantime I'll be calling 999 if it happens again. My daughter recorded the previous night I mentioned when I was already asleep and there's quite a bit of smoke