What can I do about my neighbour?

[Christmascrackerxo]

I live on a fairly nice street in a terraced house. My next door neighbour has recently started having ‘friends’ over. They shout and talk so loud all through the night till 6am. She has people coming and going constantly and this evening as I was leaving my house there was a bag and a can of cider outside my front door. An intoxicated man appeared from the ally way which leads to my back garden asking if I’d seen the neighbour. This isn’t the first random man that has been in my garden trying to gain access to her garden by hopping over my fence. I have a son and honestly I’m scared and if my son saw a random man in our garden he would be terrified. Her car window has recently been smashed during the night so I imagine these ‘friends’ are not safe people to be lingering around. What can I do? I don’t want want to say anything as I’m worried my car will be vandalised. If I contact the police I’m not sure they will do anything plus they will know it’s me who has reported.

Owned or rented property?

My suggestion might be that it's a safeguarding issue so landlords and the Police

You do need to call the police. See if you can find the local neighbourhood team and ask for a chat with one of them to see what help they might be able to offer, without causing friction.

She can't contact the police because her neighbours are talking loud lol

If you catch someone in your garden, then phone the police ofc. What's the situation of fence jumping, can you block it off? Is it a communal alley or just your access?

Has your neighbour been cuckooed?
I would be tempted to ask the police to check this out.

I would go gently and ask the neighbour if she is being intimidated by the people who are calling as you are. Who really enjoys loud drunk people in their actual home ? Tell her what you have witnessed and diary all incidents - how long , who etc as evidence if you have to take another approach. I would express how stressed you are and give her a chance to at least give her take. Failing this and more of the same then you would have to take action .

That sounds really frightening, especially with a young son in the house — a stranger appearing in your garden trying to get over your fence is not a small thing, and you're right to want this stopped before it escalates further (that smashed car window is a genuine warning sign about who these people are).

A few thoughts:

You don't have to report it in a way that's traceable back to you. A lot of people don't realise this:

101 (non-emergency police) logs are confidential — your neighbour won't be told who called. Ask for it to be logged as an incident even if no officer attends; each call builds a record.
Crimestoppers (0800 555 111) is fully anonymous if you're worried about any comeback at all.

If you rent, your housing association/landlord and if she rents too, her landlord can act on antisocial behaviour reports without necessarily naming you as the source, especially if there are multiple complaints.
Your council's ASB (anti-social behaviour) team can also get involved, and again, complaints can often be handled discreetly.

Start a diary. Dates, times, what happened — the cider can, the man in your garden, the noise till 6am, the car window. This matters a lot if you ever need a "Community Trigger" (this lets you formally demand a multi-agency review once a certain number of reports have been made about the same address, even from different sources) or if it goes further.

Get a doorbell camera / cheap CCTV covering your side entrance and front step if you don't have one already. This protects you two ways — evidence if anything happens, and if your car does get targeted, you'll have footage.

For the immediate safety issue — a stranger trying to climb your fence into your garden — that's trespass, and if it happens again while you're there, that's a 999 call, not 101. You're allowed to treat that as urgent.
On the fear of retaliation: understandable, but neighbours in situations like this usually aren't specifically targeting the person who reported — they're often too chaotic to work out who called, and multiple reports from a street (bins missed noise, doorbell cameras catching cars) make it much harder for anyone to pin it on one house.

Sorry you're dealing with this — hope it settles down soon.