noisy neighbours, should I call the police on them?

[spagblog]

The family across from us are so selfish. They like to play hideous music on full blast in their cars.
Even when they have their young children in the car with them the noise is so loud that our furniture vibrates.
It is either drum and bass stuff or what DH calls Angry foulmouthed gangsta cr@p

Around about 1 or 2am they come back from a club and shout at each other over the noise coming from their car...grrr

Last night though they were hitting each other and screaming and turning up the music on purpose. I lay there wanting to shoot them.

If it happens again, can I call the police on 999? Or do I have to use a local number...I mean it isn't an emergency, just a disturbance of the peace.

What can I do?

I would use the local police number, unless of course, their behaviour becomes violent.

We had some trouble makers outside the front of ours once and I called the local number, we had a quick response, so I guess the control lady judged on how important it was.

We had some noisy neighbours where we used to live, although your seem worse I have to say. One of the neighbours contacted the council. I think they had a number you could call for disturbances. I would not hesitate to contact someone about this, but wouldn't exactly call 999 as that is for real emergencies.

Hmm fairymum that's what I thought. I don't want to waste police time, I shall have to look up the local number.

I am worried that if I complain then we will get targetted for making trouble.
Can I complain and be anon?

I think you can complain and be anon.

Our council has actual 'environmental wardens' who can and do issue on the spot £100 fines to people making too much noise - they carry decibel measuring equipment.

See if your council has similar and you might get a quicker result than phoning the police.

ring your council and find out the number for out of hours environmental health - they are the people to ring regarding noise nuisance.

if you want to callt he police but it isnt an emergency there is an 0845 number - look in the phone book or google

I recently complained about my neighbours. The police in our area can't do alot about it as it's down to "environmental services".

When we called ES they weren't manned 24hrs so I had to make the call on the Monday morning.

I had to give my name, but this information was kept from the people I was complaining about. We haven't had any problems for 3 weeks, since they were spoken to.

This sort of thing really gets my goat, some people just don't have any consideration for others at all!

i hate hate hate this. hate it. i hate people who make loads of noise at night. i wish i could just sniper them off with a rifle (but of course if did that, my neigbours would be men in little cells) call the police every night it happens.

You could always move, not perhaps what you want to do, but it would solve the problem, just a thought?

IME people like that seldom change and are very hard to get evicted

What can you do about noisy neighbours, when all houses are privately owned? Is Enviromental Services the only way - and don't you have to declare neighbour disputes now, when you sell your house?

apparently they are getting tougher [the police] now that they have the ASBO RULING AND I WAS TOLD YOU CAN CALL 999 TO REPORT IT AND THEY WILL PASS ON TO APPROPRIATE PEOPLE .and yes you do have to report any disturbances about your neighbours when you sell..

Grrrrr I can sympathise with everyone who has bad neighbours! We live in a block of flats (6 flats) Unfortunately we live on the middle floor so we get downstair's music blarring up here most of the time which you can feel the base coming through and we have to turn up what ever we have on. Upstairs has music too but not so often and its uasually Friday or Saturday nights and we can here them at 'it' on a Sunday morning - moaning and bed creaking!!! And opposite us the couple have 2 young girls under 8 and they constantly run around screaming, running up and down the stairs so they make one hell of a noise not to mention there mother screaming at them all the time!
We can't really afford anywhere else to rent and we got a mortgage quote that'd buy us um, lets see.... nothing, can't even afford a flat with what we got offered! Our landlady might let us buy here cheap but that doesn't escape our problem. So apart from the noise around here we also have a dog which is not allowed to do any of its business in the garden so I need to get the dog and the baby out onto the cliffs for him to have a wee etc. If I need to get to ds's buggy in the shared hallway I need to move all the other crap which is down there to get to it, I know it's the others girls toys, but they need to show a bit of consideration and not just dump there stuff and go, even right in the door way Sorry to whinge but I hate it here.

Horrible for you spagblog. I had this situation when I lived in London. It is so upsetting and stressful. I fantasised about killing the culprits too.

How about ear plugs from the chemist?

I picked up a leaflet yesterday from the council about dealing with troublesome neighbours.

Wish we could move, but we were housed here by the council and ought to be very grateful LOL!
Even if I was deaf I would still feel the furniture vibrate from the music!
Having said that, they were quiet last night, clearly not talking after the row.
Their son was kicking a ball into our garden and asking to retrieve it every 5 mins though.

I am quite a gentle sane person, but I have been trying to work out the best way to assasinate them without being caught LOL!

Can sympathise. We had this problem with noisy neighbours. We had to go via the environmental wardens route which proved absolutely useless. They had a habit of turning up too late (5am party finished at 4am, phoned at 11pm type thing) or would turn up the next night. They partied a lot - several times a week but after Fri and Sat night, wardens turn up on Sun when all they were doing was sleeping it off Grrr. We also lived next to a pub on the other side and were told that if we were prepared to live next to a pub then what were we complaining about? Really annoyed us as the pub was a quiet old man?s pub with no lock ins, no noise, friendly and always said that if it got too noisy, pop in to complain and grab a free pint...unlike out biker neighbours who partied all night long, swearing, chucking beer bottles in out garden, even had someone from next door pee through our letter box

i suggest you keep a record of when these neighbours make a lot of noise. your council's environmental health people can deal with this.