Anti-social neighbours - Southwark refuses to act

[Lee Scoresby]

I'm posting this in COMPLETE desperation. The stress has given me a haemorrhagic gastritis - basically a bleeding stomach ulcer. I'm looking for any SERIOUS suggestion anyone has to offer. This summer has been made hellish - again.

My situation is this: neighbours allow their two sons to kick footballs against the wooden fencing at the rear of their property. The father often kicks the ball as well. Sounds wonderful doesn't it? What's the problem?

The answer is the impact noise, which is incredibly loud, absolutely explosive, and extraordinarily penetrating. It's exactly like gunshots or explosions INSIDE THE ROOM you're in. There is nowhere in my house I can go to escape it. It can start any time between 8am and 10pm. It can continue for hours but is utterly unpredictable. In fact, waiting for the next impact is as terrible as the noise itself. I wake every morning in dread, with stomach pains. I'm waiting all day, every day. I spend ridiculous amounts of time away from home, sitting in cafes, in the park, on buses for heaven's sake, anything to put off going home. My life is derailed.

Why not call the noise nuisance team? Three reasons. 1) Approach to my house is entirely visible by the neighbour; 2) the noise is very irregular, as I said, and officers will not respond repeatedly to a 'failed' complaint; and 3) not least, we were left baffled and outraged several years ago by noise officers' refusal to act against a different problem. I hear similar stories a lot, and I suspect there are plenty more across Southwark. An insider told me recently the council's legal department puts pressure on officers not to generate work.

Indeed, fellow residents of this local authority won't be surprised to hear that Southwark's 'response' has been utterly disgraceful over two years. Their brilliant move last summer was to inform the neighbour. The response came early the next Saturday morning: a deafening volley of impacts. We were being punished for daring to speak out.

This year, a different joke. A contractor to the anti-social behaviour unit got the father to agree to "keep it down" - whatever that is supposed to mean - "for two weeks". That's correct: two whole weeks. What it actually meant was absolutely nothing whatsoever, except that Southwark is now, in effect, conniving with the behaviour - nod-nod, wink-wink, bad faith all round.

This is the neighbour's dirty, selfish little secret, and they learn again and again from Southwark's inaction that they can keep getting away with it. Nonetheless, I myself am a peaceable, law-abiding, neighbourly person, and until very recently my instinct was still to try somehow to get through to their decency and common sense. I am absolutely not against kids kicking a ball round. The cost and effort of erecting an acoustic baffle on the inner sides of their fencing would be minimal. But. They. Just. Won't. Do. It. A direct approach from myself or my family would be met with contempt, rudeness and possibly aggression. So, to repeat, I am looking for any help or solutions or ideas whatever - legal, administrative, technical, social, anything to make them stop. Or indeed, any feasible 'citizen's means' to oblige Southwark to start enforcing the law, however belatedly. I'm at the end of my tether.

Lee Scoresby

[mynamehere]

You are making yourself ill. Operative word is you and I say that with concern for a stranger who has posted something really heartfelt. Between the hours of 8 and 22 children can kick balls. And people can get on with how they live their lives. Details about that family's life are not up for conversation whether they should / could go to the park or to a club.

Wear ear plugs in the morning and evening. Find white noise solutions.

But first and foremost walk away from the corner you have painted yourself into emotionally.

From 10 to 5 be out and about. Museums, walks, picnics, day trips.

Stop thinking about your neighbours and how they live.

This is written with concern for you.

Read happy books and laugh and watch movies you like.

Being positive is harder than being negative that's why evil does in fact win. Talk to friends who don't just reinforce the hate you've surrounded yourself with.

[Sue]

I am so sorry.

Somebody not even next door to me kicks a ball against a fence or wall and it resounds right through my house.

Once this was at one in the morning. It really gets to me, so what you have to put up with must be hell.

Could you keep a diary of when this happens?

Also could you record the noise so there is an objective record of it? And then take it up with the council again?

Do these people own or rent their house? If rent, could you approach the landlord?

My name here, I realise you are trying to help, but I don't see why the OP should accommodate such anti social neighbours.

ETA: Also, have you asked other neighbours if they have similar problems with the noise? A combined approach might work?

Another thought. There are local mediation people. I don't have the details to hand but if you google it they should come up. It's a free service but it does depend on both parties being willing to take part.

[cella]

Really sorry to see this Lee and I do understand your position. We had 2 separate instances of different noise issues with neighbours over the last year. These included really loud music blaring with all the windows open, a teenager sitting outside his bedroom window on the roof, in his underpants, smoking and just staring into our kitchen/garden (he just stared insolently when we were frantically waving and hand signalling to try and get him to stop being so intimidating) and, in one case, playing recordings of religious chanting/speeches all day next to an open window. Several neighbours were unable to enjoy their gardens in the warm weather and, in some cases, were unable to hold work related meetings at home. I went round armed with diaries and phone recordings and talked to both separately. On the case of the man on the roof his mother was concerned as she hadn't realised her son had been doing this and confronted him on the spot. It stopped immediately. The other case was more difficult but by being (relatively) calm and very persistent (I tracked fown the landlord) and showing I wasn't going away the landlord got it stopped. In your case it's a shame the parents are sending the wrong message to their children about communal living and respect for other people. I can totally understand how this invasive anti social behaviour can really get to you and do hope you can find ways of resolving it and a better quality of life for your family.

[rendelharris]

mynamehere Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> You are making yourself ill. Operative word is

> you and I say that with concern for a stranger who

> has posted something really heartfelt. Between

> the hours of 8 and 22 children can kick balls. And

> people can get on with how they live their lives.

> Details about that family's life are not up for

> conversation whether they should / could go to the

> park or to a club.

>

> Wear ear plugs in the morning and evening. Find

> white noise solutions.

>

> But first and foremost walk away from the corner

> you have painted yourself into emotionally.

>

> From 10 to 5 be out and about. Museums, walks,

> picnics, day trips.

>

> Stop thinking about your neighbours and how they

> live.

>

> This is written with concern for you.

>

> Read happy books and laugh and watch movies you

> like.

>

> Being positive is harder than being negative

> that's why evil does in fact win. Talk to friends

> who don't just reinforce the hate you've

> surrounded yourself with.

You're making massive assumptions about matters here. If what the OP says is true, his/her neighbours are being deliberately vindictive - if they're not how come the antisocial behaviour unit intervened to agree to a (albeit temporary) suspension of these activities? Note the OP is not trying to tell them to stop "kicking balls" in their garden, just asking that they stop belting balls against the back fence. Sounds reasonable enough to me.

However, whether or not the OP's complaints are justified (and they ring true as far as I can see), telling him/her that s/he has surrounded him/herself with hate and that s/he should face the problem by being out of the house for seven hours a day is not exactly helpful. "Read happy books and laugh and watch movies you like?" I mean really. You seem a good person who's genuinely trying to help, but not all problems in life - especially those caused by the behaviour of others - can be solved with admonitions to pull oneself together and cheer up.

[Sue]

I'm wondering whether the local community police may be able to advise on ways forward?

[Jules-and-Boo]

look at this website https://www.gov.uk/how-to-resolve-neighbour-disputes/use-a-mediation-service

It's clearly a real problem to you and being told to mind how to perceive it is not the solution.

I wouldn't let my kids annoy my neighbours, it's disrespectful.

[Lee Scoresby]

Many thanks for these responses.

As I begin this, it's BANG-BANG-BANG on the fence (since 8.28am). In fact, other parents often leave their kids there - this is happening now - and I don't believe at least some of them don't realise what's going on. But it's just soooooooo convenient, so they drop off and walk away . . .

In all my posts over the years to the EDF and elsewhere online I have always tried to avoid appearing uncivil to individuals (as distinct from useless institutions) but, your-brain-nowhere, I'm going to be very direct with you: you are a topsyturvey, victim-blaming, industrial-strength, traa-laa-laa, away-with-the-fairies fantasist. Perhaps I shouldn't speak unkindly to you - on reflection, I suspect you are in recovery from some major trauma of your own, but it is entirely inappropriate to project your programme onto my situation. Far from sitting round 'hating', a word I never wrote, I am expending considerable effort every single day in positive practical and emotional strategies. I particularly resent your voodoo-buddhist delusion that I am somehow CAUSING this problem by thinking about it (presumably via a karmic 'vibe' through the, you know man, the cosmic ether). Likewise, your claim - which seems to be the point you REALLY care about - that I am the culprit and they the victim, because (you say) I give "details of that family's life". In fact, I have been extremely careful to conceal precise identification. To be clear, I have zero interest in them and their lives - ZERO. If I never had to bring them to mind again I would be ecstatic.

You're right Cella - just as Southwark sends a terrible message of complicity to these people by their inaction, so this mother and father pass on a dreadful lesson to the kids: 'F*** everyone else, do what you want!' I'm sure many reading this might have fervently hoped that British culture was at last overcoming this defining cultural pathology of the last few decades.

The family is not renting, and anyway, the typical landlord couldn't care less as long as the rent is paid. (Even municipal landlords have an inglorious record of uprooting the victim rather than confronting the offender.)

I have thought about recording this racket, particularly the point-decibel count which must be incredibly high. But I have no money for equipment or professional witnesses. And what to do with this information? Who has money for a civil court case? I have been left with absolutely no faith in Southwark Council whatever - they have simply let us down over and over. Worse, they have exposed us to malice. It wouldn't matter what evidence I had: these useless officers would need to want to do the right thing, you know? In fact, Southwark could end this nightmare right now, today, if they wanted to.

I tried simply to contact the Met's community police over something else a few years ago. Good luck to anyone who is able to get any result from this possibly mythical outfit. In more civilised countries, a branch of the police would indeed have been the first contact and it would all have been nipped in the bud (administratively rather than judicially) several years ago. But the longterm trend in UK policing has been for the rozzers to stroll away from whole categories of problem - so, in this instance, we rely on municipal noise-nuisance officers. Which is fine, I guess, except that they are much too easily deterred from their function - by the offenders themselves, and by their own dishonest superiors.

As to "local mediation people", I was already so apprehensive and stressed at the start of the summer that I went along with Southwark's pretence that what is actually blatant anti-social behaviour was somehow a neighbour dispute. The resulting 'service provision' was an ASBU contractor who repeatedly disappeared, obliging my local councillor to have him recontacted. And it was pointless anyway: this was the charlie I wrote about who was happy to be instantly duped by solemn promises to "keep it down" (for 14 ENTIRE DAYS!). Needless to say, at this date, I have heard nothing from him since - months ago now.

The councillor has been conscientious in forwarding my problems, but UK local democracy as presently structured means these representatives have more or less no power.

As to other neighbours: This problem happens within one of those spaces created by multiple adjoining backyards, on 3 sides in this case. I am about to canvas neighbours more completely than I have, but I forsee various problems. Particularities of distance, layout and acoustics mean that some nearby households may be less affected. Some will be renting, some away at work for long hours. Some houses seem to be oriented so that living spaces (kitchens, front rooms) are mostly on the far side. The nearest households are new immigrants who will (I suspect) be unwilling to 'cause trouble'. In fact, as anyone who has had trouble with noise and ASB will know, for some reason most people will 'suffer endlessly in silence' rather than act. I anticipate being accused by some of 'making trouble'.

And yes, that was from the Southwark noise team's advertising ('Don't Suffer in Silence'), so Southwark understands very well that this happens.

I am painfully aware that I seem to be knocking down the very suggestions I asked for. The thing is, it's all been going on for so long that I have considered and even attempted many of them. Believe me - BELIEVE ME PLEASE - at this stage I would try anything (legal and ethical) that just stopped the BANG-BANG-BANG and gave us peace in our home, peace of mind. But - the impacts continue unabated as I conclude. Soon, they will go to the park but it simply makes no difference, because then I am - physiologically, not intentionally - awaiting their return, and yet more BANG-BANG-BANG until late tonight.

Lee Scoresby

[Earl Aelfheah]

I really feel for you Lee. It's extremely stressful to have your personal space, your home encroached upon in this way. I hope you can find a solution.

[Louisa]

I am in complete admiration of you Lee Scoresby, for managing to keep your cool over this situation. I would advise that you call the non-emergency met police number and get some people around to take details and monitor the situation. If you can afford a webcam which can record noise that would be good too. No one should be subjected to this sort of anti social and fundamentally selfish behaviour.

In recent years I have noticed an increase in house shares in the area, mostly younger people taking on terraced properties and possibly sharing the rent? Most are of course considerate of their adopted surroundings and seem to be well behaved and civil. Some however, a minority, seem to think that leaving mum and dads and renting in London gives them a free pass to regular gatherings involving drunken antics, loud music and shouting in the garden until God knows what time in the early hours. I don't recall as much of this years ago, possibly in the last 5/10 years it has increased dramatically.

If you are moving to a neighborhood, it's not a party destination where you have a free for all to make noise like you're on some all inclusive in Ibiza. This is actually a quiet residential location in the suburbs with many families and people who are getting up early the next morning. Be a bit more respectful of the people around you and if you are going to have a gathering/party make sure it is fairly irregular and most importantly you warm your neighbours about what you have planned and possibly even invite them too? Also, common sense stuff (I know some of these wet behind the ears types need it spelt out to them) like, don't go on past a certain time. Don't let your loud friends go into the garden shouting to the top of their voice, turn the bloody music down. Etc etc.

Louisa.

[Chick]

mynamehere Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> You are making yourself ill. Operative word is

> you and I say that with concern for a stranger who

> has posted something really heartfelt. Between

> the hours of 8 and 22 children can kick balls. And

> people can get on with how they live their lives.

> Details about that family's life are not up for

> conversation whether they should / could go to the

> park or to a club.

>

> Wear ear plugs in the morning and evening. Find

> white noise solutions.

>

> But first and foremost walk away from the corner

> you have painted yourself into emotionally.

>

> From 10 to 5 be out and about. Museums, walks,

> picnics, day trips.

>

> Stop thinking about your neighbours and how they

> live.

>

> This is written with concern for you.

>

> Read happy books and laugh and watch movies you

> like.

>

> Being positive is harder than being negative

> that's why evil does in fact win. Talk to friends

> who don't just reinforce the hate you've

> surrounded yourself with.

Are you for real?

[DaveR]

The law provides what is supposed to be an easy, low cost way for individuals to pursue this kind of nuisance in the courts. The provision is s.82 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, and Southwark provide specific guidance on how to do it:

http://www.southwark.gov.uk/info/412/noise_problems/429/taking_your_own_legal_action/2

Rightly or wrongly, it appears that local authorities (not just Southwark) are increasingly advising people to do-it-themselves. You have to give notice of your intention to make an application, and in practice a court will want you to have tried to resolve the issue informally before starting the statutory process.

There is plenty of other advice about this around on the internet and CAB or law centre may also be able to help.

[Jules-and-Boo]

correct - rather daunting though.

And you would have to pay your own legals, unless you win and get it paid by your neighbours :-(

https://www.gov.uk/ how-to-resolve-neighbour-disputes / use-a-mediation-service

the link I sent earlier wasn't in full - the above points directly to the page - you will need to mediate as a precursor for taking it any further anyway - so I suggest you try this

The police should be able to help - I'm sure they've dealt with similar, if not worse, so I'm sure they'll be supportive.

[DaveR]

"And you would have to pay your own legals, unless you win and get it paid by your neighbours :-( "

I think it is anticipated that you can literally do-it-yourself i.e. without any professional legal help. There are loads of unrepresented parties in all sorts of cases these days and in my (albeit limited and anecdotal) experience the courts are pretty good at helping them along, and making the process a lot less daunting.

That having been said, it's always better if you can sort something out without going to court. My reading of the OP was that that time may have passed. And this:

"...any feasible 'citizen's means' to oblige Southwark to start enforcing the law, however belatedly"

is a lot more difficult/complicated, from a legal perspective.

[Jules-and-Boo]

of course - yes you can represent yourself - but I would gather that if the OP is already physically ill then the thought - let alone the act - of confrontation would be too much. Court itself is a big thing.

I've been in a similar situation and sometimes, it's fine to get help and support - let someone else have that to deal with instead.

Better to try and sort it out first, without even going there.

A little chat with the police might just help....

[Robert Poste's Child]

Have you thought about involving your local councillors and/or MP to get their support?

Another option could be a formal letter of complaint to the neighbours, reasonably worded and ideally sent by recorded delivery, as they should be able to recognise it as a step towards legal action, and that may act as a deterrent.

[Robert Poste's Child]

Just want to add I'm feeling sorry for Mynamehere as it's clear s/he was trying to help, and the first bit reasonated with me as it's something I've had to work at myself unfortunately. I'd be a rubbish Stoic.

[aerie]

Lee, have you considered removing the fence ?

[Sue]

I have a recording app on my phone.

If you have, it might be worth trying to see if it can get a reasonable recording of the noise?

It may not be strong enough though.

[von]

There are many specialist soundproofing firms around these days, also providing outside fencing solutions. Although it is completely unfair that you would have to foot the bill yourself, it may be that this could be a solution for you as it is affecting your life to this degree. I would strongly suggest using a specialist firm though, as diy attempts may prove unsuccessful unless you really know what you are doing, especially as you are dealing with "impact" noise. Here is a link to just one of the uk firms that come up on a google search, I wish you luck, let us know how you get on.

http://soundproofyourhome.com/barriers-and-fencing/

[vshah]

Hi there

I read your message, and the other posts on here about this, and really feel for you Lee. It's your home, your private space, and you're having it regularly and thoughtlessly interrupted and ruined by your neighbour's behaviour. A few years ago I moved house and area because of my neighbour's aggressive behaviour, shouting and swearing (often directed at me - I stood it for seven years and then sold up and came to Dulwich). So I'm hugely sympathetic.

The ideal is the noise stopping or Southwark Council acting, and from the sounds of it this will remain in 'ideal' territory i.e. it won't happen, or there'll be even more conflict with your neighbour. After a while, as much as one hates it, one has to go with the realities. So my suggestion is, and you may not like it, but the priority has to be you and your peace of mind... can't you offer to erect the layer or barrier you mentioned on their fence? Some kind of noise-abating substance, I think you called it an 'acoustic baffle', so even if they do kick the ball, the sound is softer and more muffled? Or, if as you say it isn't expensive, offer them half the money to do this? I know this isn't right, and they 'should' stop or do this themselves but if they won't, then this could be the compromise. Not ideal - I appreciate that - but anything to get rid of the sound of that blasted kicking, right?

I hope this is helpful - you have my best wishes for a speedy resolution.

[Pugwash]

Many years ago we had problems with the tenants next door - shouting, screaming children, food, clothing, gravel being thrown over the fence. MOther spoken to denied that it was her little darlings. The final straw came when shoes were being thrown over the fence and hit a elderly partially sited relative who was out in the garden. We contacted the Housing Officer and made a formal complaint as part of the southwark tenancy agreement was that they did not cause a nuisance to the neighbours. The neighbours did not like us but to an extent the bad behaviour stopped.

A few months later they did a moonlight flit after receiving a whole load of furniture delivered on a HP scheme. Once the delivery van went, they brought round another van and loaded up all the new items and went. For upto a year we had people knocking on our door asking where they were as owed several thousands of pounds in HP goods

[Sue]

I'm appalled that the mediation apparently only apparently resulted in the noise being stopped for two weeks.

Would it be possible to try mediation again? Hopefully with a different mediator?

I would have thought the obvious solution would be an agreement that this kicking only took place on certain agreed days of the week between certain agreed times?

I know that wouldn't be ideal, but at least you'd know when it was going to happen rather than having the stress of waiting for it to start all the time.

[JohnL]

I think maybe a manipulate rather than attack option might work.

They are being purposely awkward obviously - I remember something similar when I was young

(between my mother and our neighbor) but it just died down as quickly as it built up.

Holidays will end soon :)

[uncleglen]

If the Council do not act, as it is their responsibility to do, (after all why do we pay for environmental services in our council tax)- then I would write to the MP.