Hey, some advice would be greatly appreciated.
I've had non stop harassment from my neighbours since May this year (I moved in to a 4 in a block top floor flat in April, council tenancy if that matters). My son has hypermobility which causes him a lot of pain when he walks, it's much less painful for him when he sort of runs if that makes sense? Due to poor sound proofing unfortunately this creates a lot of banging but the council can't do anything about this , they won't install extra sound proofing as they told me before I moved in that everywhere was fully sound proofed and my son's heavy steps wouldn't be a problem at all.
I did warn my new neighbours about this before I moved in, told them if things got too noisy please let me know and I'll try get things sorted. No problem and they were lovely and friendly up until May. One day there was a lot of banging coming from their house and the woman mentioned that they were having some building work done. I laughed and said thanks for letting me know, the banging and loud noises were setting off my panic attacks and flash backs as I suffer from PTSD. After that things got weird, they reported me to the ss three times for bogus reasons (children looking out the window a lot, a strange man coming in and out of my house and my children playing in the enclosed garden alone). Social services didn't take these reports seriously but I was told about them (I work with a lovely SW due to my mh problems).
When they saw that wasn't working they reported me to the council for apparently not emptying my bins. The council came out the same day and checked my bins (which had been emptied that morning) and took no further action. Then they started coming to my door acting aggressively and going on about the noise from my children and my cat. They'd come between 6.45am and 11.30pm, always when it was just me in the house with the kids by myself and not when I had friends/family visiting.
I started reporting this to the council as it was having a serious affect on my mental health. The anti social team came out to speak to me and said that they had been complaining about noise from my house - I explained the situation and told them of the steps I had taken to reduce the noise (extra underlay beneath the carpets, rugs, slippers for children, removing the batteries from any noisy toys, shutting cat in the kitchen at night, keeping the TV so low that you need subtitles to understand it).
The council told my neighbours to stop coming to my door so they then started banging on the roof any time they perceived there to be too much noise, including times that there was no noise apart from me flushing the toilet at 10 pm at night. This really set off my panic attacks and flash backs to the point where I couldn't even move about my home at nights after the kids went to bed. I rehomed my lovely cat who I'd had since he was tiny (he was abandoned at 4 weeks old, I had to bottle feed him and he went through a very risky op at 6 weeks old to repair damage to his intestines that he'd received before he was with me), I was extremely close to him but they kept banging and eventually it was too unfair for him to be shut in the kitchen all day. This broke my heart.
They then damaged my partners car (who doesn't live with me) but my partner didn't press charges as he felt that would make things worse for me. Again it was reported to the council though and the police came and told them to stop the banging.
After that they then called the police at to tell them (anonymously) that I had left my children in the house alone. The police came out, woke us all up at 6.30am to check if they were ok. I explained the situation and they took some details and I had to give them my partners address and phone number so they could confirm that he had been at my house until 11 pm that night and after that left, me still in the house. They explained they thought it was a malicious phone call and left.
Today I have just had the sspca at my door explaining they had a phone call to say they had a call from one of my neighbours expressing concerns that I had beat my cat to death (the one I had to rehome) as they could not hear him running about any longer and they had apparently heard me chucking him off walls etc. The sspca woman was lovely and also said that she had thought this was a malicious call but they had to check out every report. I gave her the number and name of the woman I had rehomed him with and they left.
I then reported this to the council (unfortunately in tears at the time) only to be told that there's nothing they can do about my neighbours.
I'm at the end of my tether, I'm already hurting about my cat and this was just salt in the wound. My and my partners relationship has been shakey since they damaged his car and my mh is getting worse and worse cause of this all.
Is there really nothing the council or police can do about this? Do I just have to put up with everything? How are they allowed to be so vile and nasty yet I get the blame for my children not being able to control the noise they make when they walk?
If it's any help we had a sound test done through the council to see if excess noise came from my house and we made the normal amount of noise apparently. I can also understand they would get fustrated with hearing the noise but it's not constant and only happens when my son is in a lot of pain and I'm doing everything I can to make sure that it's kept to a minimum.
He's also about to start physiotherapy to help him and my neighbours and I are supposed to go to mediation in October.