Realistically what can our lawyer WFH neighbours do to stop our (noisy) building work

[SpotOnMyBot]

We are undergoing a massive renovation project on the house. This was 100% necessary - there were 2 extensions at the back of the house that were falling down (attached to their side) that were always going to need to be rebuilt.

We have been going for only 4 weeks and we've already had 2 letters from the one set of neighbours complaining about absolutely everything from mess to noise based on the reasoning that they WFH permanently and find it 'unfair' that we have noisy works going on.

They've now escalated their letter and told us that they will 'take action' if we don't take action immediately (not sure what action we can take - what it seems they would like is for us to stop work every day so they can have some peace and quiet).

We've made sure the builders only operate in the considerate constructor hours, the builders have said they will clean their roof (this is one of their issues about the mess) but that their roof is covered in moss so they are only willing to clean the dust off it. The neighbours are claiming they are working outside hours and making more 'mess than is necessary' and not cleaning it up. They may arrive before 8am but they don't start work till after 8am - they claim this is not good enough as they sleep till after 8am and workmen arriving before 8am is too early for them.

They want to take legal action but I'm not sure what they can do - does anyone know? Given they are both lawyers, they will have the means and the ability to do this so we want to be careful! It is noisy now as they are having to demolish things but it will get less noisy as time goes on - we have told them this but they are not interested.

If only they were so quick at writing letters for their clients 🙈

Your priority right now is to keep on good terms with your neighbours. A close family member of mine is a barrister and something he said some time ago resonated with me. He said that neighbourly disputes never ever end well and it invariably means one party has to sell up and leave. Don't be that person. Go and meet with them and work out how best the work can be completed in a timely fashion while keeping them relatively happy. They may just feel that the work is interminable so if you, your builders and them can come up with some kind of timeframe as to when and how the works can be done then do that. The letters are most probably bluster in an attempt to intimidate you but are completely unnecessary - suggest a meeting and sit down to talk about it.

Take lots and lots of photos of the state of the roof now so that they can’t pull a fast one down the line

I can categorically reassure you that there is nothing your neighbours can enforce legally regarding your on going construction project—as long as you operate within the rules regarding noisy works, hazardous waste, and weekend working.

Those are the main three most important and reportable offences, the fines are heavy and you really do not want the HSE air the council come a calling.

For your own peace of mind refer to your local councils rules regarding noisy works, normally it is 8.00 onwards but differs from location to location on end times.
Absolutely no noisy works after 12 on a Saturday and in some areas non at all on Sunday.

One other thing from a legal point of view your builder is absolutely correct in not wanting to clean their roof. Firstly it is completely out of the scope of works, there is no method statement no risk assessment, no nothing! Should your neighbours at any point report “damage” to the roof and insinuate it is down to the builder and negligence, on his part trust me their insurance company will come for him all guns blazing. Then unfortunately his insurance will not cover the costs of the claim. Be very very careful here, I can not express how seriously you should refuse to entertain such a request.

The fact of the matter is that this is a construction project that needed to be done due to the deterioration of the structure. No one likes demolition, but there is no alternative in this instance. Do not be intimidated, the demo has to be done, it is what it is.

OP if you need any further advice don’t hesitate to DM me. Chin up the demo will still be over, just make sure you and the on site team keep to the three main points I’ve outlined above.

I haven't read all the thread as I'm so tired my eyes are closing involuntarily! Just wanted to pop in before going to bed to say, has anyone here on MN suggested that you invest in a getting a lawyer of your own to write to them advising them that you/your builders are behaving strictly within the law and local regulations, and that you will take action against them if they do not cease and desist from harassing you?

Building work (in Scotland) has to include neighbours being informed of proposed work. It gives them a chance to either speak to you or list their objections with the council. Your neighbours sound like a couple of pricks as you have been more than reasonable with them, therefore keeping ‘on good terms’ with them would be bottom of my priority list. Yes it’s a pain but it does have an ending ; if their complaints interfere with the schedule then it may delay the building until winter sets in and that is unfair to you and your family. More power to your elbow and make a point of thanking the neighbours who have been supportive. Good luck .

Have you got legal cover on your house insurance? If you have then speak to a solicitor through them, I'm sure that a letter from a solicitor quoting all the laws will shut them up.

As someone who WFH opposite a massive noisy and long lasting build, I can vouch that it's a pain.

They sound a bit entitled, probably because they are lawyers and have a god complex.

However there is no value escalating it, people are right. Diplomacy is the best approach.

The one thing that broke me was the radio playing - not syre why this was so much more distracting than building noises - I guess I had "blocked out" the building noise in the end.

We have a similar situation , our neighbours having major renovation work.
However annoying it may be there is nothing we can do and a reasonable approach is to think it is short term.
yea there is dust and dirt etc. but it is not overbearing and iMO your neighbour is being very unreasonable.
they can get ear plugs to sleep, they can wear headphones to work and I’m pretty sure (as my machine does it) that microphones cancel our all background noise.
Thry seem to be total control freaks and their threats are empty … as long as your builder is working within accepted times etc. by the time anyone even responded to their whinges… you’ll be done.
I am assuming you sent them a letter to advise works would be happening.

also, maybe be the bigger person and just pop the odd letter through saying - thanks for baring with us whilst we do essential building work . Your patience is appreciated!!

You are doing nothing wrong. You are entitled to do building work, it is just unfortunate they WFH. But their needs don't Trump your need to upgrade your house. Yes building work is a pain, but everyone has the right to do it. As long as builders are working within regulations nothing they can do and builders usually start at 8am. Good luck.

They sound like bullies. I would try to kill it with kindness, invite them over for a cuppa and try to talk things through with them.

It doesn’t matter how much you try and be reasonable some neighbors just complain. In my case it took me 12 years befor I finally told her to do one. We do work in permitted hours, we even cut this time down. We even did this after they decided to party till early morning hours with their friends when we had a new born baby but it seems some people do what they want and never consider anyone else. They just sound entitled. If my neighbors ever move I will buy their house, maybe they should have done this when they had the opportunity?

Your neighbours sound like idiots tbh, but the suggestions that you contact their regulator (the SRA), ombudsman or their law firms to say that they are “bullying” “harassing” and otherwise intimidating you are outrageous. Those are incredibly serious accusations and people should not be trying to get someone fired from their job or struck off for sending a couple of letters in a personal capacity to their neighbour!!

What they have done is actually the correct course of action if they have a complaint. Going to their boss or regulator in retaliation is not.

DH and I are both lawyers, our neighbours know this because they asked. Neither of us have, or would, use this to “throw our weight around”, but it would be grossly unfair to be reported to our regulators if we had a legitimate complaint with our neighbours just because we happen to also be lawyers.

They can do nothing about the noise unless it’s not within the standard hours. They can likely get you to pay for their cleaning from the dust. Are you semi detached? If your building work is causing subsidence or cracking they might be able to claim from you.
The noise is unfortunate but not really your problem (sorry if I sound harsh!) most people can go back to the office now and I imagine they’ve chosen not to. When construction starts opposite my house I’ll stop working from home but I certainly don’t expect my neighbours to stop their building works!

Your neighbours sound like idiots tbh, but the suggestions that you contact their regulator (the SRA), ombudsman or their law firms to say that they are “bullying” “harassing” and otherwise intimidating you are outrageous. Those are incredibly serious accusations and people should not be trying to get someone fired from their job or struck off for sending a couple of letters in a personal capacity to their neighbour!

This is interesting because our crazy, bullying neighbour signed all her letter name, Solicitor. So we were very tempted to contact the SRA, particular given the racial undertones of most of what she said about our builders. We didn’t though.

The SRA is there to monitor professional conduct. If someone is involved in a personal neighbour dispute over construction work, there’s no reason to contact the SRA just because a neighbour is being a dick sending letters, even if they do say “solicitor” at the end. I honestly don’t understand why some people are so quick to suggest trying to bar someone from their profession for life because they’ve complained that building work is too noisy!!

My advice in those circumstances would be to tell the lawyer neighbour to issue court proceedings or stop sending letters.

Obviously it’s different if the offending lawyer neighbour’s behaviour shifts towards the criminal- actual harassment, threats, racist comments and so forth… but that is a matter for the police. If they get charged, then the SRA will likely strike them off anyway.

Noise wise there is very little they can do if your builders are definitely keeping to considerate working hours (I work with acoustics people who work on big projects so hear about this all the time) but it would be good to make sure the builders/suppliers aren't turning up too early and sitting outside in noisy vehicles. So you can ignore legal sounding letters about noise.

However, if there are little things you can do like asking the builders not to have music on for example or giving advance warning of particularly noisy events, that might help ease relations. And certainly a weekly roof dusting or efforts to screen so the dust is less intrusive could help too.

It's a hard situation, most houses along our road are having work done at various periods including our immediate neighbours. We have young children, a noise reactive dog and an office in the garden but people need to do up houses so we are tolerant and actually it impacts us very little. We'll be having work done again soon and are lucky our neighbours have a similar outlook.

Legally, so long as your builders are sticking to considerate hours and make good any mess or damage then you're fine, but in terms of living there for any time it's worth making some extra effort to avoid hostile neighbours, lots of PPs have given good suggestions.

Good luck

People saying the lawyers can go to a hub - not all of them can and some would have to pay £50 a day for a shared room

Where I live it's £25 a day, even free in some cases. Anyway, the point is, you can't expect everyone else to stop living normal lives because you are working from home. If it's that unpleasant, you go elsewhere.

It is annoying when people buy houses that are too small and put massive extensions on though - not what the OP is doing - but I wish people would just buy houses that are suitable in the first place! It's no good for housing stock if all the 2 bed houses get turned into 3 beds, and 3 beds into 4 beds etc - but that's for a different thread.

There are other sanctions the SRA can impose besides strike off! If the letters are intimidating to a non lawyer, a letter of advice would be a potential outcome or even a phone call making them aware of the part of the code which applies in this case. Case closed.

Strike off is reserved for the most serious cases so unless the police convicted (not just charged) the neighbours of a crime (and it doesn't seem likely here), the SRA wouldn't do much.

I used to work in investigations. Only about 5% of reports result in any sort of sanction.

I think they are jealous and spiteful !
your house is going to look so smart, …gosh some people !!!

4 weeks?! That's not long at all!

It could be worse for them - our neighbours bought the house, haven't moved in yet and have been working on it for OVER A YEAR! It's been constant mess, noise and smells. They were burning trees, rubbish and god knows what in the garden last winter - we asked the builders not to do this as it was coming in the house and we had Covid so were coughing like mad. Think they have hired 2 skips for the whole time they've been working on it so the mess is just strewn across their front garden and left to blow all over the road. It's a nightmare.

It's ok for them as they come and go and see the progress but its awful to live with.

We did all of that when we were building and one set of our neighbours were deeply unhappy about it throughout regardless. In the end I just did a lot of saying that’s a shame and left it at that as nothing I did to try and help (including several things that cost us quite a bit of money) did anything to reduce the constant litany of complaints. Ultimately we just stopped speaking to them at all, which actually suits me as they aren’t very nice people and the type that constantly had something unpleasant to say about other neighbours anyway. Every other neighbour was reasonable and understanding as we have been when others have had building work done. It’s lovely to have a good relationship with neighbours and be friendly but also sensible to consider if the type of person who will talk to you and agree all is good then send threatening legal letters is really the type of person you want to build a relationship with. Maybe OP is better off just avoiding them as much as possible once they move in

Well I’m sure the neighbours would like all work to stop but that isn’t reasonable. The fact they work from home is not the OP’s responsibility.

and I say that as someone who wfh and my next door neighbours had a demolition/extension rebuilding going on 4ft from where I sit and work. It was hell. But I appreciated it was temporary and needed to be done.

If you both end up in legal action no one wins. Do all you can to avoid that, but the bottom line is as long as everyone obeys the law then it should all be fine. We have a lot of buildings works near me - one family seem to have moved out for a year 2 doors down and left those of us around them to endure all the noise and mess - very nasty of them to do that really and they are breaking the law where they have put the piles of earth etc but we are all just tolerating it for now and the drilling noise int he summer is slightly better than their children's noise so at least we are spared the sounds of their teenagers for a year.
Then the house next to them has just come emptied - no works started but as the buyers have not moved right in I expect that will be another project going on. People opposite were refused permission to pull their house down entirely - thank goodness and I certainly objected to that to the planning people, but I expect the owners will have another go.

My view is thees people are really greedy - they are not prepared to pay for a bigger house and prefer to annoy neighbours with projects ecause they are uncaring and also they cannot be content with the house they bought even though families will have lived in those houses for decades without needing massive en suites and huge amounts of space. However I keep my views entirely to myself. I bought a house a quarter of a century ago which was large enough for us and I have never done a single building project on it, same with my neighbour next door and others opposite.

OP, how has it gone?