Should we pursue noise complaints before selling our flat?

[Starlingshoes123]

Hello, looking for some advice.

We live in a flat below a council tenant neighbour, we own our flat. We have the lower levels so we have full ownership of the garden. She often plays incredibly loud music and our next door neighbour has filed noise complaints against her, we previously didn’t mind. We fell out for a stupid reason 6 months ago, she slammed the door at 4am for 2 weeks so I did a noise complaint and a few weeks later one about her music.

We’ve come into some money so decided it’s finally time to move to a bigger place. I’m conscious we have these two noise complaints on record, alongside a police report when she verbally abused me in the shared hallway. Obviously I realise that’s all stupid now but we didn’t expect to be selling right now.

The current situation is she’s clearly got some kind of comms from the council re the music, as she is taking the stance of ‘how dare us/ our kids make noise in the garden if she’s not allowed to make noise.’ Which presents itself as every time we spend time in the garden, she opens her window and scream’s expletives at us and our young children, eg ‘your f*ing children should be in a cage.’ Pretty unpleasant stuff. She then blares music at full volume, with speakers pointing out of the window at us in the garden. This has happened 4-5 times in the last 7 days. She’s completely unhinged it seems, my kids are 3 and 5 so they are not quiet but they are not hugely loud and we aren’t in the garden that much due to school and other plans.

The council noise man called me last week to explain they will send a random person round every few days to try and catch the music in action.

My husband thinks we should just ignore it, say the music has stopped and ask if they can cancel our previous complaint. I think we could easily lay a trap of the kids playing in the garden, and invite the noise guy round to catch her in action, with a view that I’d rather get the noise complaint resolved before we are under offer and it comes up. Additionally I’m sure it’s in our lease that we have a legal right to enjoy our garden, and we could go down that avenue too. Let alone the constant verbal abuse at two small children.

Any advice?? My husband thinks I just want her to be punished as I have a strong sense of justice and it wouldn’t benefit us to follow it up but I think it’s an open case that we could potentially resolve. He thinks we can say we don’t have a complaint but I think it’s so tied in with next doors complaint that it will still exist on file and we will have to declare. What to do!

Housing Ombudsman?

Difficult situation which I would deal with by carrying on with doing what you can to get rid of her - police involvement and having your neighbour also reporting and complaining.

The horse has bolted now, but personally, I wouldn’t have complained. Unless someone is at serious risk, the council won’t do anything constructive after one complaint or a few and I do mean this politely when I say you were a bit naive when you complained, never mind not considering the potential issue of declaring the complaint. You need to get her out to have even a small hope of selling. I understand what it’s like to have someone like her live above you.

You should definitely tell any potential buyers. It’s not okay to just shift the problem onto an innocent buyer - you don’t like it so why would you think anyone else would? You would be deceiving any buyer if you didn’t tell them what their new home would be like to live in.

That’s appalling - you hid the problem from the poor buyers? You deliberately deceived them so they would suffer?

my council neighbour in the below flat has just been evicted due to so many complaints so I advise you to follow it through. I’d feel terrible if a new owner moved in and had to deal with that.

I think you have to declare it. It puts you at a disadvantage but maybe your buyer won't care? I wouldn't buy anywhere with noise complaints.