Another awful neighbour one...!

[Skywalkingaway]

Hello 👋🏻

I’m at my wits end with my neighbours, and looking for some advice.

Young (ish) family with 3 children and a dog (that loves to bark at every bloody thing going). Since moving in, they have:

• had parties almost every weekend until the early hours of the morning, with the kids running riot in the garden way past 11pm

• smoke weed constantly

• have drug dealers knocking the door, either doing drop offs or chasing payment

• lifted up the 6ft fence panel and came into my garden to retrieve a ball without asking
• after being asked not to lift my fucking fence panel up, one of the children attempted to climb over my fence

• scream and shout “GIVE US OUR BALL BACK” when their ball comes over - just to add, they didn’t knock the door to let me know so I had no idea their ball had came over

• mum and dad loudly argue every single day, to the point where he will be in the garden screaming “I don’t give a fuck what the neighbours think”

• the children constantly stare when me and DD are in the garden - garden is on a slant so even though the fence is tall they can still see over

• children copy what me and DD say when we’re in the garden

So in a nutshell that’s what they’re like! I genuinely feel like I can’t go into my own garden as they’re always there! I wouldn’t care if they did their own thing, but they (mum and children) always try and get involved/have a nose at what I’m doing...

It’s a HA property, and I know that the dad is not classed as living there. On that basis, they’re definitely committing benefit fraud but surely they’ve committed some kind of council housing fraud too if the mum lied on her application and said she was a single parent.

I’m getting that frustrated that I’m tempted to report them in the hopes that they get evicted. I know how awful that is, and the children don’t deserve to be uprooted like that, but the family are just horrible and have genuinely made my life hell for the past year they’ve been living there.

It’s been so hot today and I’ve been stuck inside with DD because we feel like we can’t go into our own back garden without getting watched constantly and mocked. (We did try, and as soon as we went out the next door kids came out and began jumping on the trampoline and staring at us. They were also shouting at each other and calling each other “fucking dickhead” “prick” etc. They’re all under 10 too!)

Any advice

Also recommend buying noise cancelling headphones and sunbathing in your garden in peace, ignore the stares hopefully they will get bored if you don't react!

Report them to the social or council or whomever she is commiting fraud from and then call the police and advise them of the drugs. Get them out!!!

Report every damn thing.

Report the benefit fraud. Although I very much doubt they’ll be evicted for it.

You can buy security brackets to stop your fence being lifted. Then plant lots of pyracantha (aka firethorn) along the fence line.

Can you do a mutual exchange. That's about your only hope. They rarely evict anyone these days and it can take years. It would also have to be for something really serious, they've attacked you for example. If you report them be prepared for the backlash and it getting worse.

There used to be a man in a tiny 1 bed HA flat near me. Held raves in it somehow several times a week all night. Was off his face on drugs most of the time. Barking dog as well. Ha did nothing except get social services to come daily to make sure he'd taken his meds, that's it. He moved out himself several years later. The HA put in as his replacement a drug addict couple with mental health problems who regularly scream and shout, try and boot the doors in, damage outside light fittings by practicing their punching skills on them. Despite being on a starter tenancy and being reported within weeks of moving in, a year later they're still there and now have an assured tenancy!

Thanks all for the advice, I was fully prepared to be chewed out for reporting the benefit fraud!

Yes the neighbours on the other side are sick of them too, they have a much shorter fence so I think they get the staring and fence climbing worse than I do. Other neighbours seem to get on with the mum a bit more (on the surface anyway) and seem to chat quite a lot. But I’m very close to the other neighbours, without going into too much detail I know them very well and have done for years, and they’ve said that they’ve lived in their house for x years, and they’re not prepared to live the rest of their lives living next to nightmare neighbours. They’re prepared to move because of it.

Trellis on top of the fence. Makes it harder to climb. Climbing roses....I believe rambling rector variety will be growing on fences three doors down before you know it.

Be nice polite and friendly, but report the hell out of them.

Keep reporting them, keep a diary of every infraction, record the noise and abuse, ring the police and report domestics when they're fighting and turn her in for benefits fraud. I hate people like this. Those kids should be with someone else and the couple on the street.