Neighbour disputes over cameras, parking and threats of police action

[Itsaneighbourone]

Please help my head is swimming and I feel sick.

Semi detached. We own the boundary fence. We have our own drive. Tensions have been building for a while despite our attempts to be reasonable. She claimed she has to sound proof the stairs due to our 13 year old at considerable expense to herself. Said teenager is not loud and is small for age and doesn’t make a racket going up or down the stairs.

She has had lots of parties and made drunk racist comments out in the garden - these are recorded and were reported to the council all be it 6 months ago. Things escalated a few weeks ago she soaked me on our patio with her hose when I shouted she was soaking me she said Oh, ok all right and continued to water. We took advice from the police at the time (unofficially not logged although we went to the station) and they said it could be classed as assault. She set up cameras filming us in the garden (again just to reception to ask for advice) and we again went to the police for advice who said to ask her to remove them we did and she lost it refusing to take them down etc The next day we went on holiday and we parked our car on the road outside the house and my daughter was staying and she parked her car on our drive and was living at ours whilst away. She demanded we move our car and put it on the driveway as she said she wanted her boyfriend to park there as he was visiting. We explained our daughter was staying and needed the drive. We came back yesterday to a horrendous letter. The hand written letter says we have a conduct and behaviour towards her that is aggressive and we are bullying her and it has all been logged with the police. Furthermore it says we can not send her any signed or unsigned letters or knock on her door or talk to her ever again else she will go to court to get injunction out against us. She has said we can not reply to her letter.

Please be gentle I’m fragile and highly upset never had this in my life.

Do as she wants. Dont reply and completely ignore her batshit behaviour and her demands. Don't let her see you are rattled. Keep a log of all incidents going forward.

Do we make a fulll report official now to the police included recordings of racist comments ?

To be clear, @Itsaneighbourone ? Is she being racist towards you and attacking you because (as far as you know) your skin colour? Do you live alone?
I'm sorry this sounds awful and like she is targeting you. 💐

You have the letter setting out her demands so she can't complain if you ignore her and don't respond to her at all. If this tips her over the edge and her threatening behaviour towards you escalates then go to the police taking her letter with you to be clear you have done nothing and it is all coming from her.

You need to tell the police everything, including the water hose incident, the cameras pointing at your property, the abuse and the threats towards you. Show the police the letter she's written.

I doubt very much that she's reported you to the police. What for? Standing in the way of her hosepipe, asking her to point her camera elsewhere, a child running up and down your stairs, parking on your own drive?

I would do as she’s asked, as that’s basically what you want is to not have any contact with her, though no doubt she’ll keep trying to escalate things and at that point report.

We are white British our neighbours over the back who she has admitted to filming legally entering and leaving their own properties (claiming she is anxious) are non- white British. She admitted to us two weeks ago that she was not intentionally filming our garden but it was capturing her garden as she was in fact filming the neighbours behind us (they are British but of Indian heritage)

I reported the comments and recorded them as she was drunk and shouting loudly ‘send the immigrants home all of them’ etc

As if the Police don’t have enough to deal with without dealing with petty neighbour squabbling.

I didn’t report them to the police by that point she had lots of late night parties and well after midnight and I was recording it as asked by environmental health and submitting them via the app for noise pollution but I did also email the council about the racist comments but as far as I’m aware the case is still open and pending despite being open 6 months ago

So what should I do? I’m not trying to argue with her I’m trying to live peacefully

Can you move?

So this started with her saying your house was noisy? Then escalated with the cameras, which she admitted were not meant to capture you. There is a water hose incident and her making unkind comments about other neighbours?

Honestly, my advice is to let it all die down. Don't escalate as she hasn't make formal complaints about you to the police. If you both own your own houses it will impact selling so just let it die down. She can ask for you to move a car, you can refuse. Job done.

You simply learn to ignore her and her drunken rants and racist comments. She seeks your attention. Do not engage with her. The letter is her way of getting a response from you.

The best response is no response.

Reading back,did you first report her for loud parties?

Yes we reported her to the council for loud late night drunken parties with lots of racist comments - we had to do this online as they were at a weekend. There are multiple occasions we were told via email to record them all via an app.

This sounds really upsetting and I think it would be reasonable to make a non-emergency report now—not as retaliation, but so there is an accurate record of what has happened.

Give the police a short, factual chronology and let them decide what is relevant: the hose incident, the cameras, your request that they be repositioned, the parking demand and now this letter. You can also offer them the recordings of the racist remarks, explaining exactly when and where they were made, so they can decide whether an offence has been committed.

Her letter is not an injunction. Only a court can grant one. I wouldn’t reply or knock on her door, though. Keep the letter, avoid direct contact and continue recording any further incidents. Obviously, report anything urgent straight away.

She cannot reserve a space on a public road for her boyfriend, assuming your car was parked legally.

The CCTV is a separate issue. Recording beyond her boundary is not automatically unlawful, but data-protection law applies if the cameras capture your garden, other properties or identifiable people outside her land. She should have a proper reason for the coverage, record no more than necessary and consider using privacy masking. You can ask what is being recorded, object to being recorded and request footage in which you appear.

Normally, you would raise those points with the camera owner before approaching the ICO. Given her demand for no contact, I would ask the ICO how best to proceed before writing to her again.

This explains the CCTV position and the practical options:

https://thesilverbrief.blog/neighbour-cctv-disputes/

Full disclosure: I’m connected with the site, but the article addresses this precise issue and links to the relevant official guidance.

Reporting to the council, I assume these are council houses?

I am also assuming it has escalated because you reported her to the council for the comments or was it more about the noise of the parties?

apologies I cross posted

Agreed.

Are you in council houses then?
Get your own CCTV up at the back and front.
Send the immigrants home isn't really racist? calling someone slurs etc is a different matter or threatening your other neighbours. So I'd probably leave that

Is it a letter she's written up with chat gpt and posted it to you or is it a solicitor letter?

Time to get your own security and ignore her now. Make noise in your own home as much as you need/want to and let it die down between you.
Obviously if she starts being noisy with parties then go and switch your own music on or lawnmower at 7am.

OP's neighbour's racist behaviour towards their Indian heritage neighbours isn't just 'petty neighbour squabbling'. It's overt racism and it is illegal.

'Send the immigrants home' when directed at their British neighbours who have Indian heritage is definitely racist. They are being targetted due to the colour of their skin.

But it isn’t the OP’s problem. In fact, one could argue that people have a right to say “immigrants should all leave” or whatever in the privacy of their own home. The point about free speech is that some of that speech may not be speech that you approve of.

Just ignore them. If noisy parties cotongue to be a problem, report them in the usual way to the council. None of this sounds like police business.

Do the Indian neighbours intend taking things further? This racism is the most serious part of your post because it moves from unpleasantness to criminality. I think it best to be guided by them.

We both own. The racism - when in your back garden and not overheard or not seemingly directed at others - send the migrants home is one phrase. They were shouting loudly (and recorded by us as we had already been asked to record them using a log sent to us by environmental health due to a number of weekend of very loud parties and drunk behaviour going on for days. Environmental health asked us to log anything past 11 pm it was t just one comments. It was mocking as well and not just one comment. I’m white British our neighbours on all sides are not they have different backgrounds.

We have CCTV as of 6/8 weeks ago front and back. She is recording the bottom bit of our garden and the whole of theirs and the parking area. It’s not her area she is filming. She has told DH it is to monitor people coming and going. We are going to the police Wednesday as advised by someone and report a course of conduct. In the meanwhile a number of things have happened and show an increasing paranoid behaviour.