Is this legal? Blackmail threatened...long story...

[Solo2]

I paid the owners of a privately owned field, that backs onto our garden, to allow workmen to distribute excavated soil from our garden. The owners agreed, their farmer, employed by them, agreed and the excavated soil has top soil covering it.

My neighbours have told me that it's illegal to put what would be deemed 'domestic waste' onto greenbelt land and are threatening to blackmail me, using this information.

There's an ongoing dispute between us, as they keep using the private field as their recreation ground, ruining our privacy and view. The field owners have forbidden trespassing (and we agree with them) and are v angry and had asked me to 'police' their land.

I can't really do this but the neighbours are now saying that if I 'tell on them' for STILL accessing the private land, then they 'might' raise the issue of illegal spread of waste soil. I feel angry that I'm now being threatened with blackmail and angry that the neighbours are still flouting the request of the field owners.

This is the outline of a long saga but my question is - is it really illegal to put soil from a garden onto a greenbelt field used only for occasional pastureland?

Would it really be deemed domestic waste, if it's just the transfer of soil from one area (our garden) to another (the field backing onto our garden)? Does it make a difference if the owners of the field expressly allowed me to do this and accepted payment for this?

Jaybird, I don't intend to move house now until old age forces me to do so. So I won't be selling for decades to come.

Re. mediation, because of my own professional background, I have an indirect professional input into the local mediation service and could therefore never use it, for a variety of reasons.

My response to the neighbours all along has been to try to find quiet, unobtrusive, calm ways, in the background, to reduce encounters and just get on with our lives. The situation only came to a head as I now have a responsibility to my own pond construction site and to taking reasonable measures to prevent anyone getting injured on and around the site.

Had things not had to come to this recent encounter with the neighbours, my plan was to still say nothing but to fence off the field view and plant mature trees and climbers along our boundaries that would screen us visually, although do nothing of course about the noise.

I also tried some time ago to buy the field myself but the owners never want to sell.

It's one of those situations where I can see that the neighbours and I will just never be on the same wavelength. For example, when the woman came round, she was also going on about her child rearing practice based on letting them go and be free and sort out their own issues and disputes and cycle without crash helmets alone to school (a 6 and 7 yr old) and that it was no longer her job to enforce rules or discipline etc etc.

I know this can be a popular view. My view is that leaving them to a 'Lord of the Flies' melee with peers leads to no good and that children need adult input at this age to help them to make the right choices and that they're still far too young to go off cycling and playing in the streets alone (our houses face a v v fast-moving road). My DCs HAVE to wear cycle helmets and don't yet cycle alone anywhere without me.

So she was also implying that I 'babied' my sons whilst she was growing strong, independent children. Whilst I didn't rise to the bait, this did leave me feeling v angry and criticised but also, once calmer, with the knowledge that we come from different perspectives on mothering that would never really make close relations easy between our families.

That sounds very defensive on her part. Very irritating for you, but if you are comfortable with your child-rearing then I would ignore it.

Screening with planting sounds like a good idea.

As far as the noise goes, there are options you can go down like ASBOs. Many councils do have a noise officer. However, I am not convinced they will be able to keep to it and it may make the bullying worse.

I need further advice please . Since my last post, the neighbour has 'encountered'/accosted me in the street, in front of our houses and been verbally abusive. She's told me that all the other neighbours in the street are now against our family (she's friends with most of them)....

She rambled on about how she spends far more time with her DCs than I do with mine (she can't possibly know if this is true or not and it isn't anyway) and various other personal slights that were petty, irrelevant and untrue. As we were talking, 2 neighbours passed by and she immediately called out in a friendly way to them to indicate she knows them and they're on 'her side'.

I felt extremely upset and intimidated and just walked away back into our house. Since then, I've felt uncomfortable and anxious about going in and out and also going in our garden unless we've got adultfriends round.

Now her children - who are still trespassing onto the private land backing our gardens, despite the threat of legal action from the shepherd - have taken to climbing high up in the huge tree that grows between the ends of our gardens and staring at myself and DCs for ages. They can see into our garden and also into the whole of the back of our house.

At worst, I find this intimidating and we just come back into our house. I also feel very angry as it's obviously a big "f*-you" to us to show that no matter what, they'll trespass and 'spy' on us.

At best, I can see it's just silly little children being encouraged by their strange parents to annoy and spy on us and surely they have better things to do with their time and they must get bored eventually.

However, the screening trees, when we get them, will probably not block out their view of us from this large, tall tree and I'm not sure if there's anything further I can now do?

If I contact the parents (which I really don't think I have the guts to do now), they'll verbally attack me and it still won't stop them trespassing. I can tell the shepherd/ field owners but on a day to day basis, there's little they can do without really taking legal action against them - and I doubt they'd really want the expense of a case against what's now largely just the children trespassing.

I can try to 'rise above it' but I'm finding this difficult.

Does anyone have experience of this kind of thing or can point me in the direction of finding help? It just feels too trivial, in a way, to be a police matter but it seems to be ruining our lives at the moment.

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that mediation isn't possible as my profession means I have direct links with the local service.

Bumping my own thread and needing advice on increasingly abusive/ intrusive neighbours please???

Oh god you poor thing - I remember your other thread :( I think it might be worth talking to the police and certainly keeping a list of everything that's happened (MN should prove useful in that regard)

I think threatening blackmail, verbal abuse and intimidation (which is what they're indulging in) may count as harassment? I have no legal training but it would be worth finding out.

I think you've been too nice for too long and they now just think they can get away with anything. :(

Have you considered that when your dc are teenagers they'll probably be using the field in exactly the same way as your neighbours kids now ?

It's not their tree is it but the one in the field they trespass into? Ask shepherd if they will put any climb paint round the trunk (no idea if ok to do this to trees btw!)

'anti' not 'any'

Aresholio - I don't think the OP is likely to be putting a trampoline up in there or mowing a bike track around it though is she? Nor can I imagine her DC will throw stones at sheep :(

Thanks. Have been feeling a bit isolated with all this going on.

No way would I let my DCs do what the neighbours children do, even as teenagers! When the neighbour mum first came round to express her anger, she was also going on about how she feels her DCs are old enough to make their own decisions and she wouldn't tell them what to do or stoip them doing what they shouldn't, especially if she felt what they did was OK, even if it was trespass. My heart sank because I dread to think what her children will be like as teenagers!

No, it's not the neighbours tree but the tree in the field, where the neighbours children are still trespassing. It seems sort of too trivial to be getting so wound up by it - just a bunch of Children climbing a tree and staring at us...but in the context of everything else, I feel intruded upon.

From the time the next door children came home form school tonight till about now, they've been in the tree most of the time, staring at my DCs who are in the house now and staring into our garden. So that's about 2.5hrs. I feel sure (although I may just be paranoid by now) that the mum has encouraged them, as it's the only way they can currently annoy us. They don't seem to be going far out into the field in the last few days, since things escalated.

When I next see the shepherd, I'll ask if he can take down the swing rope that the next door dad rigged up to the tree and ask him if he could perhaps cut off some lower branches.

I think what's getting to me most of all is that despite the field owners requesting and then demanding that the neighbours don't trespass in the field and despite me meeting with the neighbours to request the same and then writing this in a letter too (whilst I'm responsible for the field andf liable for accidents in our temporarily unfenced garden), the neighbours are STILL trespassing. This kind of flouting the law/ what's right makes me sort of afraid that the neighbours will corss other boundaries of what's socially appropriate.

However, I'm afraid to contact the police in case either the police think the whole thing is too trivial or - worse - in case this massively ups the ante with the neighbours and they get other neighbours who they know to gang up in some way on myself and my DCs or sneakily vandalise our property.

Maybe I could try to have an off-record, informal chat with police just to see what they say? I don't know if they do that sort of thing though (never having had any contact with police before) or whether they're duty bound to have an official record of a complaint?

Ask the landowner to erect warning signs on his property with a Safety Warnings Saying something like "Please Keep Off. This field has been treated with weedkiller."

I haven't seen anything about throwing stones at sheep, is there another post i've missed ?

I do think though that letting your children play in a field which is at the rear of your house is a perfectly normal thing to do. Tree climbing, swings, bikes, games etc etc are all exactly what 7ish year old should be doing really, Childen of that age should have some autonomy. I completly agree that the trampoline was out of order and that your neighbour ought to have reined her kids in of they were causing you problems though.

I was interested by this comment "I suggested that she offers to pay them for recreational use of the field and access, as I've paid them - albeit temporarily - for access to the rear of my garden and the distribution of excavated soil. She said she didn't think she should be having to pay to use the land...So I guess we just have v different moral views"

Would you feel better about the situation if your neighbour had paid to use it as you have ?

Arseholio - as you can't be bothered:

he owners have sent their shepherd twice to tell the neighbours to keep off the land but as he too isn't around and has no sheep grazing at present, he can't see what's going on and isn't currently affected (only was when the trespasses began to chase the flock of sheep and throw stones at them).

I don't think the OP is bothered about kids climbing trees. You might want to read her other thread.

Ahh yes I see now, thank you for finding it for me..

Fancy finding the other thread for me ? I can't be bothered to look for it.

:o Nope

Rubbish!

Lucindacarlisle, I'll see what the shepherd and landowners might be prepared to do in terms of signs up in the field.

Arseholio, I've also posted about this on another thread, as it's casued me so much angst. I'd be 100% fine with children using the field if when we'd moved in, we'd been told from the start that it was a public park/ recreation ground. What I'd have done then, if I'd still decided to go ahead and buy the property - is completely screen off the field view and hills beyond, although I'm not actually sure I'd have bought it under those circumstances.

A main reason for buying this home was the fantastic rurual views and the previous owners had assured us that in the 27 yrs they lived here, there'd been virtually no one ever in the field. However, they moved when the next door children were much younger, 5 yrs ago and I'm afraid that now these children are older, the family and their friends and relatives have taken possession of the field. As they're right next door to us, everything they do is immediately intrusive but if welived 7 doors up from them, it may not feel so bad.

My parenting approach is v much - don't upset or annoy anyone, don't overdo noise, always be polite and respectful etc etc. The neighbours parenting approach is - let the children be, go wild, learn from their own mistakes, do what they want to do. That approach has its merits but I think needs to be balanced by consideration of others.

I think their mum is trying to recreate her own childhood, in a much more rural setting than we live in here. She told me about her childhood at one of our 'meetings' and I could see what she was getting out. Despite the rural outlook, this is a main road near a large town/ city with a concentrated population. If all the properties were detached with lots of land around each, her approach might be really fine but they're not.

TeamEdward, I could call the Community Support Officer and ask if I could speak to them off record. I really am pulled between trying NOT to up the ante on my part but just wanting the neighbours to respect the landowners view and to respect our family privacy.