To ask for revenge ideas on the sodding students next door

[HomeIsWhereTheGinisNow]

At the end of my tether. Group of students have just moved into the terraced house next door, and had a 21st birthday last night. It was ludicrous, music pounding until 3am when the police finally shut them down. Desperate requests for the music to be turned down (not off...) at 8pm and midnight were met with serious attitudes and an expectation that as it was a birthday party we should just deal with it ("it's not Sen midnight...!"). The London council in charge of the borough has helpfully closed down their noise officer service, and as we're London we're bottom of the list for the police. So basically we're stuck. Begging them to turn it down so our two year old could get some sleep didn't work as they literally told me that they couldn't imagine what it'd be like to be a parent, it must be hard etc.

So here's the rub. Their landlord is gong to have a word but I'm not sure what he can do. The authorities won't help. So I suspect we're in for an academic year of misery, what would you do?

But a parent can help the two year old or go somewhere else that is less likely to be disruptive, and it's probably the parents putting the volume up on the 5 year olds video to then go home and complain about noise neighbours make , thing is people are noisy and in all sorts of situations people can help lessen the noise but they don't they expect people to be tolerant.

Sprink

I agree that the first step should be a conversation, but it should take place before the party.

YABU for going round at 8pm. It's generally accepted that music goes down at 11pm. I don't think the council will even entertain a complaint before them.

By being unreasonable, they clearly have you marked as a bit loopy and aren't bothered what you think of them. You've essentially destroyed your one chance to build a friendly relationship with them and I feel you might be in for a difficult year.

If it was loud enough for the police to shut it down at 3am then it was clearly not normal levels of noise that the neighbours just have to cope with.

OP- lots of universities have off-campus behaviour clauses in their student discipline policies so if you know which university they attend and at least some of their names you can complain to the university (if it's not clear who the contact is just write to the vice-chancellor and it will be passed on).

What would normally happen then is the university will interview the students and you/other neighbours and if merited will issue a formal warming. If they persist they can be excluded or suspended from the university for a period of time. They can also be fined, required to do community service etc depending on the scope of the policy.

You could also contact your local PCSOs who can visit and issue a bollocking, they can also contact the university via the police liaison officer

If the noise/music is loud enough both the council and the police can get involved irrespective of the time of day. There are no 'it's only once a year/8pm' allowances.

Noise between 8am and 10pm generally has to be louder before being considered anti social but it is considered anti-social above certain levels.

Excellent point, BoneyBack, perhaps that's a lesson the neighbours can learn for future parties, and perhaps OP might have a chance to prepare somehow.

And if your child keeps them up all night before one of their finals - well, let's hope they don't have your attitude towards the odd bad night thanks to neighbours.

How odd.

Sometimes I'm awaken by a crying baby/child.
It never upsets me, although I'd rather not, but unlike inconsiderate adults who should know better and respect the neighbours peace at night.

It's the lack of consideration for others that is evident is some many other areas of life too. From playing music on your mobile phone, parking like a dick to playing noisy games on phones and tablets in public areas

I've endured far more of that from parents and children than from living (as I do) in a student-y area.

A father looked most surprised the other day on the train when I asked him to give his children headphones for playing their computer game with the sound up in the Quiet Carriage. And then spent the whole of the rest of the journey passive-aggressively shushing his children.

Don't like the "sodding students" reference. It's fresher's week and you've had one bad experience.
Maybe your 2 year old will annoy them too?
As pp have said, the world does not revolve around your toddler's right to sleep. Those sodding students will each be paying extortionate amounts of rent, so your rights don't trump theirs.
Go round and talk to them, they'll be fine and listen if you're reasonable. But don't think about taking revenge, that's just pathetic and students will have far more creative revenge ideas if you choose to go down that route

It never upsets me, although I'd rather not, but unlike inconsiderate adults who should know better and respect the neighbours peace at night.

You could say it's inconsiderate adults I've been awoken most nights for 1year -18 months with crying, you could say it's inconsiderate for the parents to put the baby where they know theres a thin wall.

8pm on a Saturday night and you complained? We have a 4yo and 8mo and have students living in the apartment above. Never would we ask them to keep the noise down at 8pm! That's early. YABU to expect them to keep the noise down at that time.

Granted we've both been students and know what it's like. Give them a couple of weeks and the parties will be more sporadic. It's freshers week right now. Our parties used to calm down by the second week every year.

I feel your pain. Until quite recently we lived next door to a student house (in fact we had students on either side but the layout of the house meant that we didn't hear the other side so much).

The first couple of years we had quiet neighbours (I think they were postgrads so not so keen on partying). Then we had a group move in who would play loud bass-heavy music two or three evenings a month. At first they made a token show of being apologetic, but they quickly became quite bolshy if I went round to ask them to turn it down. I'm not naturally a complainer, but when I had to go round and ask them to turn it down at 2am on a Wednesday night I'd had enough and got the council noise enforcement people involved. One visit seemed to be enough to get them to shut up, at least for a few months. As they came towards the end of their tenancy they did gradually start up again, and on their last night in the house they had a massive party in their back garden which I'm sure was purely to spite us (unfortunately for them we slept at the front of the house so that was the one time we couldn't hear them).

Then just when we thought we were finally free of the noise the next bunch moved in and were equally as loud. This second group were more willing to turn the music down when we asked (and to begin with were willing to warn us when they were going to be noisy, although that fairly quickly fell by the wayside). However, that in some ways worked out worse as we felt had to cut them a lot of slack to keep them being friendly and cooperative which meant we were suffering in silence a lot.

In the end the only solution for us was to move as there was no way we could know who we would get moving in each academic year.

Unfortunately, unless you've been in the situation yourself you don't quite realise how hellish it is, which is why you haven't had many sympathetic responses here.

In fact I think some of the responses are well wide of the mark for a number of reasons:

a) "It's freshers week". It's pretty rare for students to be party animals for freshers week and then quiet as mice the rest of the time. The fact that they were completely unresponsive to OPs requests to keep the noise down points to them being "party when we feel like it" types.

b) "It's a 21st so it's a one off". Students tend to live with people from the same year group so it's likely that OP has more "one off" 21sts to look forward to.

c) "They're third years so they probably be too busy working". The second group that lived next to use were third years and still had plenty of time to have parties.

My advice, OP, would be to speak to them, suss them out and see if there is a chance of getting any kind of rapport with them where you could convince them to reach some kind of compromise, but start putting in place a plan of action for what you will do if they're not willing to be reasonable. The council may have got rid of its noise officers but it still has a statutory duty to deal with noise complaints so that would be my first port of call.

Also, sod that "poor student" schtick. I was a student once and when we wanted a good time we went out to a bar or a club. We didn't keep our neighbours up until the small hours with booming music. That's not being students, that's being selfish tossers.

I think all the 'complain to the Uni' comments are quite funny. Assuming it's a private let not uni owned then it is absolutely nothing to do with them and they won't care at all. Complaining to them would be like writing to Tesco to complain that lived next door to one of their employees and they were too noisy, ie entirely pointless.

I don't blame you for panicking a bit op. They've only just moved in, it's Week 1, and there are many more Saturdays and many more 21st birthdays stretching ahead of you.

Music shouldn't be so loud that next door can't hear their television ever, and certainly not without some prior warning. What did they think their neighbour's would do? Spend the evening enjoying the party atmosphere?

I wouldn't go down the revenge route though, because I think they'd win and you'd have a miserable year.

Talk to them. Appeal to their better nature. Offer to be courteous about early morning vacuuming, drilling and loud CBeebies in return for advance warnings of parties. Use small talk to ascertain which university they attend, and store it away in case you need it. The university will care, and will act on complaints should it come to that.

"Our" university cared and although I can't remember exactly what the sanctions were they were enough to shut the students up for the rest of the year. This was in private rented too. Although I wonder whether London Universities would care less with less of a concentration of students from any particular university in any area.

Complaining to the Uni is perfectly reasonable and totally different to the Tesco analogy. Our local uni has a 24 hour phone line and will send uni security out to speak to their students, even if they are in private rental accommodation.

They also have 2 PCSO's who work with the uni and will go round and have a chat with any repeat offenders if necessary. Students can sometimes be a bit thoughtless, as can we all, especially when we are young, but often a little friendly communication can go a long way.

I meant to say that complaining to the uni if problems persist would be reasonable. I'd try a friendly chat after the first party as often people don't realise how much noise can carry to neighbouring houses.

margaret

That's incorrect. I work for a uni and we always take these complaints seriously.

You complained at 8pm?.....

It does depend on how loud it is, I asked someone to turn theirs down at 8pm - it was in the garden and I couldn't hear my own TV inside with windows/doors shut.

I used the excuse of my neighbour's child being in bed and they were fine.

Agree with contact uni and Landlord.

They also may not have a TV licence.

Have you smelled any weed yet? Maybe you could ask them about that, suggest if you are disturbed again you will be contacting the police about it.

I very much doubt the uni can do anything. They are adults and the behaviour is away from uni. Like writing to someone's office probably wouldnt, apart from sounding a bit crazy
Landlord is the way to go

And sorry but 8pm... Nothing can be done there.

We live next door to a ten bed student house. We expect a bit of noise and mess but one year was awful - parties that didn't even START until midnight and would go on until 10am the next day.

The only thing that worked was complaining to the University. They have a special neighbourhood relations team who come down very hard on disruption. Things really improved after that.

Evergreen17
And sorry but 8pm... Nothing can be done there.

Unless they have changed the rules, things can be done. We where asked to keep a log and given a sound meter to measure the noise levels. (this was the local council)

We have students next door but one - we had three nights of being woken up at least three times a night. Screaming, doors banging, music and singing! At 3am one morning I posted on the SU Facebook page - I was at the end of my tether. I got a lot of moaning from students on there - apparently I was lame for spoiling their fun and I was my fault moving to a house next door to a student house (er lived here when their own parents were still at school).

Got a result though - uni have given us a phone number to call and export bad behaviour. They have also spoken to the students.

Not a peep since!!!!