to complain to the council about the lights in my back garden?

[marenmj]

'home' at the moment is a Victorian end-terrace in a sea of terraces - with the exception of a great big new development with its back up to our back fences. The building isn't news - the shell was already in place when we moved in, so no surprise there.

My complaint is that the back of the building site is (probably?) a carpark by the looks of it. They had a mast & cluster of lights up before that made the back garden very bright, but were mercifully low by comparison. They have just put in three great, tall lights (similar to this) that are on all day and night. At night my back garden is as bright as day!

Our only windows that fully face the building are the ground-floor toilet and mine & DH's on the first floor, but DD's room is first floor at the back of the house and even though her window faces away from the building her room is still bright enough that her automatic nightlight never comes on.

Our back garden is small, only -maybe- 30 feet, and the closest lamp is up against the dividing brick fence, so it is really quite close to the house.

SO...

AIBU because a) the building was approved and mostly built before we moved in and b) I shouldn't expect darkness in my back garden anyway and c) we can always buy blackout curtains

OR

AIBR because that's a fucking lot of light pollution, especially for a ~9 (I think) apartment building. We can't even see the stars at night anymore from our little plot of grass

I know it isn't life threatening so I am trying to gauge if I am BU.

The lights would, most likely, have been on the original plans. Can you check this?

YANBU.

We had to put up with lights like that for a few weeks when we had filming outside our house and that was bad enough.

Complain to the council. AFAIR you are not allowed to have security lights shining into someone elses house or causing that much of a problem.

In the meantime buy blackout blinds for your dd bedroom if it is affecting her sleep - but definately complain.

Probably, I haven't got that far yet. I'm still trying to figure out if I'm a whinging biddy for being upset about the light in the first place.

I don't know if I would have a place to complain if the lights were in the original plans (which I would guess that they are), especially since the building was here before me.

It's not affecting her sleep yet. ATM she sleeps in a cocoon-like hammock, so it blocks the light (which is why we haven't bothered with blackout curtains before).