I love my flat, and can't afford to move, so I'll start with that.
TLDR; My landlord and the freeholder keep asking me to move things, disagreeing on where they should be moved to/who is responsible, then blaming and intimidating me over it
My landlord is generally ok, we've had a couple of small dramas but usually we get on. My landlord does NOT get on with the building's freeholder, who owns most of the flats in the block (all besides mine and next door), we call this guy the landlord's landlord. Next door & my flat share a private storage area. Next door have recently moved out, leaving all of their junk in the storage area, which has lead to a series of events that I'm really not happy about.
First of all I was asked to move everything out of the storage area so it could be painted. Annoying in itself, it was advertised as storage for our flat. No trouble, I move all my stuff. My landlord then asks me to clear next door's stuff since they've moved out and left it all. Their items are also heavy and bulky, I have a bad back. Again no problem, over a few days I haul it all down to the bins. On landlord's advice a set of shelves is left in the communal hallway as the painting shouldn't have taken more than a day. Next thing we know, we're getting aggressive emails from Landlord's Landlord (LLLL) because the shelves are obviously a huge fire safety issue and their presence sat against a wall means everyone in the building will immediately burn and die. Fine, I move them back to the storage area. Within hours, the next email appears. The neighbour's junk must be immediately removed from the bin area due to not being household waste. I move it back inside until I can get to a tip (bear in mind there has been no offer from my own LL to deal with his ex-tenant's shit, he just forwards me these emails from LLLL). A FURTHER email is then forwarded to me, accusing me of being a liar and having poor character because I was seen on CCTV moving the offending items back inside the building (i.e. following his request). LLLL attaches screengrabs from CCTV to accompany all these emails, even though I can see him curtain-twitching on the ground floor.
I've booked a council collection to pick up next-doors stuff as I'm getting rid of some furniture this weekend anyway. The cheeky fucker LLLL now wants me to add some of HIS tenant's discarded furniture. He also tried to charge me 6x the council fee to remove the original junk which isn't even mine.
I didn't mind sorting some of the neighbour's bits to stay in the good books of my LL, but I'm getting sick of emails several times a day attacking my character and insinuating I live like an animal because I'm the one hauling all the junk around.
Can I just refuse to engage from this point? The council will collect everything next week. LLLL also has a CCTV camera which points at my front door - literally just my front door - and I'm finding it hugely intrusive. I had naively thought that the CCTV was installed in case of burglars, not so that LLLL can use it to bully and harass tenants. Would I have any case to ask for this to be taken down or at least angled to watch a communal area?