To be most annoyed at the destruction of my garden

[pouffepants]

My front garden is quite small, just lawn, with 2 sides of bushy/shrubby/ferny things. As you can tell I'm an expert gardener. All this stuff was here when we moved in 7 yrs ago, and we mow the lawn and cut the bushes regularly. There's lots of stuff that flowers and it looks really good in the spring/summer.

In October, I came home from work to find the lawn mowed. I thought this was odd, since I knew dh had been at work all day. I then realised that next door's had also been done (no7, we're at no8). They're usually too ill to do theirs, so we will often mow theirs while doing ours, so I figured they must have got a relative to do both, which I thought was kind. So I went round to say thanks, but they knew nothing about it.

Fast-forward to yesterday, I came home from work to find all the bushes gone. Literally everything cut back to ground level. Dh says he came back in to find a contractor just finishing the job. He asked him why he was cutting our garden, to get the reply 'it's STILL not been done since the complaints, so we had to do it!' What? What complaints?

Well apparently the other neighbour (no9) has been complaining about our garden.

1. There's nothing wrong with our garden, it's not overgrown. We share a path, which I keep VERY clear, due to having to carry heavy work stuff down it every day. The other side is where we park, so is well cut so we can get in the car easily.

2. No9 is super friendly, literally pops round daily to use our printer, and ask for lifts. We have paid for him to do DIY for us, since he's out of work, which he said he was grateful for. They've also done a couple of favours for us.

3. If our garden was unruly you would have thought that the HA would have written to us, asking us to do something about it?

4. Who is paying for this work? We've not been billed for the mowing, but I'm concerned that we'll be billed for this, since it must have taken a while to remove completely all the bushes. If we're not being billed, then why are the HA using resources to cut down people's gardens on the say-so of one bloke?

5. No9 doesn't have a front garden, but does have a back one. When he moved in, there was a ropey fence on the boundary. He put up a new one, and since we benefited, we gave him half the cost at our instigation. He then almost immediately had a drunken fight with his brother, and punched holes in it. This was quite out of character, so we didn't say anything, but it is annoying that our fence has holes in it, and we can see all their piles of stuff in the back garden and them in their hot tub.

So AIBU to be annoyed that a perfectly friendly neighbour has complained about our perfectly ordinary garden? (and no7's)

And AIBU to be even more annoyed that the HA which is presumably affected by the cuts, is cutting down people's gardens because someone else doesn't like then?

Has he complained or has there been an error by the sub-contractor? Speak to your housing officer to find out what is going on.

I'd say they've turned up to the wrong address, do you have a similar named road on the estate?

I would speak to your housing officer on Monday.

I think you're within your rights to expect it to be replanted by whoever arranged for this at their own expense.

It's a very specific road name, and ours is the only HA road on a private estate.

Nos 7&8 are the only houses with gardens, the rest only have parking spaces.

The contractor showed dh the job sheet, which showed the complainants name address, which was correct for our neighbour.

This is bizarre!
If there was a complaint, then you should have been notified and asked to rectify the problem.
It can't be right that a complaint was made, and contractors sent in without you being sent any letter or notification.

I would phone the HA as soon as possible.
But i would ask your neighbour in a firendly off hand sort of way, and see what they say.