Terrible neighbours

[Lindsaycreate]

I’m hoping for some advice. I moved into my terraced home six years ago and unfortunately on one side have unpleasant neighbours. They are a couple in their early 70’s, she literally never leaves the house/garden and they have CCTV all round the house. We are constantly watched. They have no friends. All other neighbours are lovely and have had the same problems with this particular couple for many years so the small comfort is that it isn’t just me they have a problem with.

However, I am the one directly beside them. They put a fence up in my garden (there is a dividing wall and they put it up on my side of it) and I had to go through solicitors to get it taken down. They then built the dividing wall to two metres and said I couldn’t plant any plants in my flower bed beside it - apparently plants would discolour it. My flowerbed is full of flowers in summer - really beautiful and I cut them all back in the winter. They know this. I’ve just gone out the morning and they have poisoned all my plants within half a metre of the wall. I’m so upset. I don’t know whether to ignore it or say something to them about it.

They are very malicious - they call the police if you engage with them at all. I’ve learnt to record every interaction on my phone so I can replay for the police as the couple lie about everything. The couple seem to thrive on arguing and fighting. I don’t. I haven’t engaged with them since last July when the fence was removed.

There is no way to discuss anything with them, they cannot see anyone else’s point of view. The neighbours who have lived here longer say this has gone on for 30 plus years. Solicitors have been involved with every neighbours interaction with this couple.

I have a primary age son who is scared of them. I can’t move. I love where I live and every other neighbour is fabulous.
I would love some advice about how to get through this. I do not want to put CCTV up.

Thank you all for commenting. It’s actually helpful to know that other people have similar issues. I couldn’t get my head around it when the nastiness began because I’d always had great neighbours.
I’ve ignored this incident (reported to police and have a ref number to add to the rest) which I think is best. I have, however, put two little cameras up - inside my windows but visible (and just covering my own boundary😊). I’m thinking about fake plants and I like the sound of some wind chimes!😂 Thanks all.

Cover her face

but please post that photo!!

Mount visible CCTV. Mount motion sensor floodlights. Place long rectangular tubs against the fence. Grow bamboo. CCTV will catch them if they try to poison it. If they don't kill it, the bamboo will provide a screen from their cameras.

Alternatively, garden sails to block their cameras.

@Lindsaycreate we didn’t have the issues you’re having but suffered with our NDN and her offspring for many years. They would shout, have loud, sweary rows in the garden. Anytime anyone complained NDN would knock on the doors wanting to know who had put the complaint in. All of us were wary of her son, he could be pleasant until drunk and at that point capable of anything.

When NDN died we all breathed a sigh of relief until her son moved in. (He had another council property, just didn’t want to live in it.) It took a good long while for the council to do anything but one day we came back from our hols to find the son, his sweary wife and their kids had been evicted. Felt so sorry for the kids, the daughter had plans for her future and I really hope she succeeds. New neighbours are lovely.

There will be an end to your suffering, don’t give them the satisfaction of a reaction. I hope it’s not for much longer. Good on you for putting up CCTV on your side.

It is indeed helpful OP to know other people have issues too. I think I read somewhere that around 40% of people have experienced Bad Neighbour issues? So that's rather a lot of people and I guess one is lucky if there aren't any BN's around nearby. I had had a few isolated instances in my previous 40 years before moving here - but defo no "Downright Campaign" stuff by a group of neighbours, with resident ringleader. Sometimes the environment is one that might lead to it - in my case it's an unadopted road and that's something rarely encountered where I've come from and it's my understanding that, in the case of such roads, the neighbours get together and make their joint decisions jointly and I'd come in perfectly prepared to operate that way/make my sitting room available sometimes for our meetings/etc and help with our joint running of our road and it became clear that things hadn't been operating that way when the "known owner" (who lived nearby) turned up ordering me "We don't do things that way - we do them differently here" (ie pretty rural Wales) and what she meant was "We do them the way I dictate - and btw I'm going to trespass in your garden with my car literally every single day!". It didn't augur well from the start - with attempts to order me around (rather than everyone working together co-operatively as equals) and regular trespassing in my garden by her and another neighbour (yep...I checked all the paperwork - and no-one has any legal rights to come into my garden). I just had to sit it out and act Normally and stop that constant trespassing and "wait". The number of times I asked myself "What is logical normal conduct in Britain?" was multiple and I just had to "wait it out" and remind myself I was acting logically and just had to "wait it out" and keep acting normally and just wait for things to improve - but I was not going to be made to "want to move of my own free will (apparently)" by them. Sometimes that's how it is...and sometimes a neighbour is deliberately trying to drive out someone who has done nothing wrong (but they wanted to choose who was going to buy your house and hate the fact it was sold in the normal way on the open market and so they couldnt dictate who moved in).

Fake plants is a great idea, they look very realistic these days 👍 😀

It'll drive them crazy that they can't kill them and if you get cctv of them pouring something over the wall you can get straight onto police

You say you are being watched, do the cameras not face their property? Pretty sure you are not allowed to have carers facing any other way

Have ya spoken to the police about the camera over looking yer private area? Cause that's nae allowed

@CrazyLadie Thank you for that. No we haven’t spoken to the police about this incident. We really don’t want to antagonise them. I actually found the blocked right of access more worrying in case of home fire or home accident. The access is the only way to get to our back garden or outbuildings. We were tempted to ask the Fire Service to do a home survey.

@CrazyLadie they actually had to trespass on our land to install the camera too. They waited until we had gone on holiday.

Yes PLEASE PLEASE buy some lovely realistic looking fake plants (you may need to invest a tiny bit) and when it comes to choosing them, think about what they'll look like in the rain or very hot weather etc, so it's not obvious that they're fake - oh and remember to water them every day! 😏 (In fact I'd plant them in the same place as the ones they poisoned!)

Then when you have a video of them trying to poison them, pop some Benny Hill music on the videos, upload to YouTube then pleeeease post the link here! 🙏 😙🤣🤣

This.
Also, I really feel for you with these ghastly people. Hang on in there.
Also, bear in mind if you sell before they die or move, you have to declare any disputes with neighbours on the conveyancing forms.
Good luck!

I’d get great satisfaction out of knowing they’re wasting money on weed killer trying to kill fake plants! Also you can put a tub in amongst the plants and collect whatever it is they pour on your side for testing! Or return it back over their side, that’s the neighbourly thing to do 😂

My friend complains about his next door elderly neighbours. I've seen them when I've visited. You can't underestimate the retired who have nothing else to occupy them.

Similar to your OP they're both retired and rarely leave the house except occasionally in their car during the day or a walk to the local shops. They don't have cctv but they're always watching the road through vertical blinds and know everything that goes on.

He finds their gossip malicious as they stand in their, mostly paved over, garden (even their front lawn is chippings) doing non-jobs in order to accost and watch the neighbours.

He tries to be dismissive as he doesn't dare ignore them as some of the other neighbours do, as he lives next door. It's an awful thing to say but he hopes, with them being elderly, that they'll be gone soon. Not dead but into accommodation.

OP I'd recommend ring doorbell at least, just for peace of mind. I love the suggestion of artificial plants.

I don't think one can automatically throw people into categories and think "Elderly = trouble". The worst neighbours I've had here (aka "the ringleaders") were both still working age when they "started being a right pain". By and large my experience has been that the ones most likely to be bad neighbours are those who are generally chavvy in behaviour (eg been bankrupt or darn nearly were/not brought up with a full set of manners etc) or rather lacking in intelligence and, if they're both very bad with their personal finances/chavvy and not very bright = they'll almost certainly be bad neighbours (this could be because they are my direct opposites - but I suspect people like that would be bad neighbours to everyone and not just those people that are obviously more responsible/intelligent/well-mannered than they are).

I agree @ElizaAgainn These people were probably the same as young adults, middle aged etc.

From experience (I have only had a couple of bad neighbours) the middle aged woman was a nightmare because she was inconsiderate, noisy and completely ignorant of her impact on others. The elderly man was a nightmare because he wanted to be, and had time to be. He would plot things and would hyper focus on a perceived grievance and would just not let it drop. I obviously can’t extrapolate from these two but it is something I’ve noticed about stories of problem neighbours who are retired. It seems they tend to be more purposefully vindictive rather than a general nuisance.

I think people have to be the type to be bad neighbours anyway to do the "having time to be and wanting to be" thing when they get to be elderly. The ringleader bad neighbours I have here that started in on the "bad neighbour front" did start it whilst they were both still working and boy did they ever create all sorts of trouble then and pretty much from the outset of me moving in here. It's a mixed bag thing with them now that they are both retired - as they don't live in our road any longer - but they are clearly devoting a bit of their extra time they have in retirement to still doing their level best to be "ringleader troublemakers" from a different nearby house (even though it's outside our road). She's spent much of this afternoon doing her best to spy on me to see if I do anything she doesn't like and can use to "stir it about me" for and she would have had to spend that time at work if she wasnt retired. It very much does depend on what someone is like as a person anyway and whether they come from the sort of family where it's deemed they should "get their own way on anything they want and shove others out of the way to get it". There's a bit of I'm deemed to be an incomer by them, whereas they are known as a particularly troublesome local family/have various relatives living nearby as well and hence they think they are "It" and I should accept them "laying down the law" (they clearly have no idea that I've come from a city that's pretty modern/equality-minded/etc/etc - and they don't want to know about a more normal way of thinking....).

Rights of access issues - is THIS the real problem???? You mentioned you have a right of access over their property and I'm wondering if it all stems from this? Maybe they have never accepted the legality of it and, as they get older, they've become more and more resentful of what they see, in their head, as 'them being wronged'???

Hi !
Was surfin' about over neighbourish issues to find a similar situation as in ours and landed up your helluvacouple neighbours
How has it been eversince , did you make progress in happiness in your home and neighbourhood ? Of course I utterly hope so
Love and smilies