To be the worst possible neighbour?

[Sammyham]

Know this all sounds extremely pathetic and petty but help please?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/legal_matters/3251295-Neighbour-dispute-cooking-smells-noise-advice-needed

^ Previous post about a dispute I've been having with a neighbour which I've been unable to resolve peacefully over noise and basically a complete lack of consideration for the fact we have to live next to each other.

It's almost everyday now where I'm being woken or disturbed in the evening by my neighbour whom I share a hall with and who refuses to close her door, keep the noise down or respond to any kind of reasoning.

I've tried talking to her calmly and and get completely blanked, I've even shouted...and still been ignored, have been to my agency who have done nothing, I've gone to the council but there really isn't much they can do, I even closed her door like others advised in my previous post which led to her shooting out her flat, trying to wrestle/ stop me closing my front door and forcing her way in and then screaming outside and kicking my door for 5 minutes as I'd invaded her space and now I'm done.

So please, whilst staying on the right side of the law can I be the worst, most disturbing neighbour possible?

(I've tried being passive and ignoring but it only means she gets louder and more encroaching)

I remember reading some of your first thread. Why won't the agency do anything? Do you both rent through the same agency?

Did you try the fire hazard route?

Any random clothing left in the corridor I would assume is abandoned rubbish and treat accordingly.

If the smell is so bad a few piles of vomit outside her door might make her consider trying to contain her the smells and shut the door.

From reading your previous thread I think that you can only really do something about the noise. Cooking smells aren’t under any sort of restriction and your reaction to them is really, really extreme which is not her problem. Ditto keeping her door open. I can understand it is a pain for you, but it is her door and she can keep it open if she wants.

The noise sounds annoying. But it does also sound as if the flats are poorly sound insulated. But at the same time, although it is annoying, it’s talking and the TV, not all night parties.

It does sound like you are in a flat which doesn’t suit your needs. If you are bothered by smells and noise being so close to a neighbour in poorly insulated flats doesn’t sound like the place for you. How long is your lease and can you move?

Just as an aside, are these low budget housing? If that is the case (and particularly if you are in London) it kind of goes with the territory that they are noisy and smelly and people are cramped together. If that’s the case you may have to up your budget or accept that’s the breaks in that kind of place, particularly if it’s a diverse area and there are other cultures around who don’t value quietness at home like the British do.

It's one agency renting the property so we share the same land lord, I live in Leeds city centre and have done for a while so am used to living in/ around a busy area with many contrasting cultures etc that city centre living brings.

I've tried the fire hazard route too but she point blank refuses to acknowledge this, as she said the other day whilst screaming outside my door, she'll do what ever she likes and If I don't like it, tough.

There isn't really any issue with poor insulating/ sound proofing etc it's just the fact that we share a hall way and her living room/ TV is a matter of meters from my front door, so when her doors open and she has it on full volume, talking (extremely loud, booming voice) it's as though she's almost in my flat.

Contract isn't over for another 10 months and unable to afford the cost of rent here and somewhere else, understand there really isn't much I can do and it's just a situation I'm going to have to get used to but I'm kinda sick of trying to be polite..

Hopefully this image loads, to show how close our doors are together

I think all you can do is continue complaining to your agency and council. It’s really hard but try not to be antagonising because you don’t want to end up the subject of complaint yourself. When I had problems with extremely noisy neighbours upstairs (parties until 5am on weeknights, screaming, crying, arguing, vomiting in the shared hall until 5am, thumping footsteps, slamming doors, yelling, pounding music from 11am until 5am) I called their letting agent once or twice a week to complain, spoke to the council regularly and called the police (sometimes twice in one night) and still nothing was done about it. It’s incredibly frustrating and I know this isn’t helpful for you, but the only thing that solved the problem for me was moving. I think you need keep up a dialog with the agency. If you keep hounding them they may eventually snap and have a word with her. I mean, how fucking difficult is it for to keep her goddamn door closed?? Some people have zero consideration for others. I really feel for you OP.

Buy some cheap air freshener and spray it into her flat when the door's open. Do this constantly. Are the other people in the building affected in any way by her noise? The people downstairs from her, maybe? Enlist their help. Approach her en masse. Are those her pink slippers outside the door?

You need to keep going down the fire safety route with whoever you rent the flats from. Hallways shouldn't have stuff in them like that and if front doors are fire doors, they shouldn't be propped open.

Hi OP - this all sounds like a nightmare! I am a lawyer (I’m admittedly not specialised in Tort law, but it is one of my favourite areas of law so I know a fair bit).

From the information you’ve given, it sounds like you could have grounds for a claim in private nuisance. Private nuisance involves somebody "causing a substantial and unreasonable interference with a [claimant]'s land or his/her use or enjoyment of that land", and this can include both noise and odours.

Be careful about your idea of trying to get your own back. Don’t get me wrong — I get why you’d want to do so!! But cases such as Christie v Davey show that it can end up undermining your entire position, and can kill a good case and effectively make you the bad guy.

I appreciate that it costs money, but if there is any way you can get in touch with a solicitor I would do so. If successful, you could get an injunction against them to stop both the noise and the odours. A considerable number of firms approach this on a no-win no-fee basis: look into it in your area. Even if you do need to pay, the cost of getting a solicitor involved could be less than the moving costs/increased rent that may be incurred.

I hope this all works out for you OP — good luck

Thanks so much for the replies.

WTF: That's a concern of mine, that I keep complaining and end up either annoying the agency so much that they ignore more and become the reason of complaint myself (which I already feel is happening, there's zero reason for them to chase/ resolve this as they're already getting paid rent etc so why would they?)

I've done the air freshener thing also, countless times, at first I thought there was a communication barrier so would do this every time to show my discomfort but yeah, no luck/ does nothing/ changes nothing..

I'll look in to the private nuisance claim but it's all getting to the point that for something I consider so petty and easily resolvable that it's getting/ going to be so much effort and that I should just give up.

Some people don't care how they effect others, sorry to be depressing and melodramatic but that's how I feel with this and should give up until I'm able to move

Kinda why, within legal terms I'm looking (in a kinda jokey way) for ways to annoy her back, maybe smoking out my flat door so it goes in to her flat/ playing loud music with my door open etc, basically being equally annoying..

Trying to annoy her back
Is an understandable wish but will
Only make the ill feeling between you spiral even further. It’s not admitting defeat to consider moving
. Once a neighbour begins to be a problem we start to see them as ‘the racket ‘ or the ‘smell’ next door. If things are going to be miserable and expensive to try resolve, as soon as your rental period ends i would honestly start to look elsewhere. Life’s too bloody short.

If your local fire brigade does it, get them to come and do a fire safety check (ours does them for free).

If she is doing anything that is a bit hazardous, like stuff in the hall obstructing an exit route, that may carry more weight with the landlord/agency. If the flats are relatively recent conversions, I think the flat doors should be fire-resistant for 30 minutes and have a closer on them. Leaving the door open negates the effectiveness of that.

Yes to the "door closer" mentioned above. Our flats' front doors all had to have closers put on them last year. It's a fire hazard if they're left open. That might be the route to go down. Ring the building regs dept at your council. Hopefully it's the landlord's duty to comply etc
Good luck, things like this are awful, and I know.

Are you able to leave the communal door wide open when you're in your property?
It may help get some of the smell out.
Also it may scare her enough to start shutting her door when she realises any stranger can walk in.
You jusr keep "forgetting" to shut the communal door don't you?

Why the biscuit katiekittens

Good thing it isn’t your problem then isn’t it judging by your lack of empathy.

I agree with leaving the communal front door open “accidentally” whilst you’re home. Assuming you have a proper secure front door it may make her think twice about leaving her door open and it will help ventilate the bad smells

My neighbours response to a perfectly reasonable polite friendly request was to up the behaviour to deliberately antagonise me and throw in some extra shit too. Their landlady didn't want to know as they paid the rent so caused her no problems, council noise people useless as issues where intermittent. Police 101 were brilliant. I logged every incident, a trigger was eventually reached and the issue passed to their anti-social behaviour team who contacted me to explain they would come and talk to both parties, after the chat they can then issue what is I think called a pin notice. They have to sign it, its basically them stating that they are aware if they carry on with the behaviour they will be served with what used to be called an asbo, i.e. it will be a police record unlike the pin notice. The police (Hampshire) were brilliant. They did come to me, neighbours were out that day, but someone knocking on my door mistakenly about giving me a removal quote and a bit of detective work showed the property they rented was on the market as 'available from x date' so they were moving out and we didn't have to take it further. Make sure your behaviour is squeaky clean though, the police won't do anything if tit for tat arises. Luckily for me my neighbours never worked out that the problems with their electricity supply over the coldest weather period in their all electric flat was due to 'someone' regularly tripping the switch.

Cooking smells aren’t under any sort of restriction and your reaction to them is really, really extreme which is not her problem. Ditto keeping her door open. I can understand it is a pain for you, but it is her door and she can keep it open if she wants.

I just wanted to say that your reaction to the cooking smells isn’t extreme at all. If you have strong unwanted odours permeating your flat all the time it can get into your clothes, soft furnishings and it can actually be really depressing. Imagine if you didn’t smoke yet someone else’s smoke was making your flat stink like that? Would that be acceptable? I don’t think so.

Anyway, I posted on your other thread. I hope you can come to some kind of resolution as it does sound really unpleasant.

Do you havedc? A bubble machine outside your door pointing into her flat may get her to close her door.... who wants streams of bubbles blowing in!

It sounds awful op but the clearly has issues

Itchyights

To answer your question- ‘ To be the worst possible neighbour’ as the OP intends is no way to resolve her problem.

I accept that there is a language barrier at play here, but she has stated that she has entered someone else’s property and shouted at them. Surely there are other ways to handle such a situation. It can only escalate from here.

I would not be impressed if someone did that to me. Maybe that means I’m lacking in empathy.