Dealing with a noisy neighbor

"Statutory Noise Nuisance
Noise that is unreasonable is:

- Loud noise after 11pm and before 7am
-  Loud music and other household noise at an inappropriate volume at any time"

You definitely have a complaint there. http://asbhelp.co.uk/noisy-neighbours-noise/?gclid=CjwKEAjw_oK4BRDym-SDq-aczicSJAC7UVRtrU_DIeSLhxWC7VkKws7wH-ifO2A_Nwfl6kETCfhBzRoCBUTw_wcB

From how friends have had to deal with this, but it depends on local councils, you might get provided with something to measure the level of noise. If they have a landlord, the could be forced to evict them if they don't stop. That is normally the extreme though. It is taken seriously most of the time though.

I had something similar a few years back, I kept a diary noting times and what happened each time (eg. Monday 01/01/2000 7am, shouting, duration 10 mins, 2 people ). I complained to the housing association and to my local councillor and I think to a community liaison type person and in the end it got sorted.

I think your best approach could depend on what type of building you live in, if it's owned by the council or housing association you complain straight to them, they have dedicated teams for this, if not is there a building management company for your building? They should know who owns the flat if so and may be able to contact them on your behalf. Still contact the council though and see what their procedure is, you definitely do have a complaint!

we're having trouble at the moment with a guest house that is on a street behind our building, I think it's basically a bit of a halfway house and they have loud outdoor parties that go on til 9 or 10 the following morning, but it's hard to work out exactly which building it is as there are a few that back onto us. Really inconsiderate and annoying!

awh man, I feel for you. We have difficult neighbours but they've eased up over the years, though now they're more odd than loud! I hope you can get it sorted

Oh man, I feel for you. We have had issues with our neighbor, too. We bought our house (semi detached) almost a year ago and for ages, everything was great.

Then music started, Friday and Saturday nights - usually switched off by 10.30-11pm so we didn't worry too much, we could hear the thump-thump-thump of the bass, but we were lucky the TV would drown most of it out.

Then they decided that doing DIY at 11pm was a good idea. One night we had gone to bed and were woken up to what sounded like our house falling down. They were drilling on the other side of our bedroom wall. OH got up and started banging on the wall - they did stop. Neighbor came round the next morning, she did apoligise but then went on to say she can't help it as she works late and needs to get things done. We called BS, we go to work early and therefore are in bed earlier, there's no excuse for noise after 11pm! Agreed that she would stick to more social hours or at least warn us in advance.

Nothing else terrible occurred, a couple of parties which  queited down before midnight (annoying when you're up at 6am for work or at weekends it's up early for horses!) and the usual Friday/Saturday night 'unwind' (as neighbor calls it). Nothing unbearable.

Then New Year happened. We don't really do NYE, it's just another day to us, but can appreciate that some people like to celebrate. We guessed our neighbors would, and we were right. Loud music and loud guests from around 7pm. Fair enough, they are entitled to enjoy themselves in their own home. Still going at 1am - it's New Years, we thought, we don't want to be 'those people', so hoped it would quiet down. 2am, felt as if it was getting louder. 3am, still no sign of quitting so I decided to go round and ask them to turn it down. They did but by 4.30am it was still going and we could still hear it - so OH went round. Same thing as before.

By 5.30 they FINALLY switched the music off. We were shattered. It took us weeks for my sleeping pattern to return to normal 🙁

2 days later, she comes round to try to have a go at us about it. Managed to diffuse it and get our points across, so turned into a discussion. We agreed that she would warn us of any impending parties.

Thankfully there has been nothing since, except OH had bought a huge sound system... I think he plans to fight fire with fire should it happen again!

Next time we are buying a fully detached property. Nothing worse than suffering through someone else's noise 🙁

Hope you get it sorted, OP.

I have now put in a complaint with the council. I'm also kind of second guessing myself, like I feel like I'm over reacting, but surely if the bass is heard over earphones and tv it's too much? It has also woken us up a few times, and on the weekend which is our only sleep in time.

The fact that you are second guessing yourself means you're being more than reasonable! If you're hearing it over headphones then yes, you have good reason to complain! 🙂

This isn't anywhere near as bad as the op... But it's still annoying. My new neighbour works at home during the day (as do I). Apparently they don't seem to see the need to not scrap their chairs all the flipping time! It's like every 10 minutes or so. Sometimes even more often. Why can't he just pick the chair up. Or get a chair on wheels. Or put a rug under the chairs? Or put something on the chair legs? There are loads of things you can do. But I feel like an arse for complaining as it's such a small thing. Mind you, when I've set up my workroom, it's on the other side of the flat so I won't hear it as much.

I'm not sure why we're hearing it so much anyway, I can only assume it's right by the wall and maybe we share some floor boards.

This isn't anywhere near as bad as the op... But it's still annoying. My new neighbour works at home during the day (as do I). Apparently they don't seem to see the need to not scrap their chairs all the flipping time! It's like every 10 minutes or so. Sometimes even more often. Why can't he just pick the chair up. Or get a chair on wheels. Or put a rug under the chairs? Or put something on the chair legs? There are loads of things you can do. But I feel like an a**e for complaining as it's such a small thing. Mind you, when I've set up my workroom, it's on the other side of the flat so I won't hear it as much.

I'm not sure why we're hearing it so much anyway, I can only assume it's right by the wall and maybe we share some floor boards.

I feel your pain on this one too. I can hear nearly every noise from his flat, footsteps, we can hear his washing machine, his food blender, when he moves off the sofa, when he works out (which creates louds of annoying noises, juming around etc)... nearly everything. The everyday noises I don't mind as much though. I'm now in the process of logging all the times he plays the music, the council told me to do this over 4-5 weeks.

I'm being treated to an all day session of 'if you're happy and you know it clap your hands' blaring from the tv downstairs today! I'm not happy and they're close to knowing it!
I always feel bad when we work out, I do any jumping around parts in the hallway where it's carpeted so it doesn't cause so much noise, but it must still annoy them downstairs. Although for the whole of January and most of February our upstairs neighbour (who we affectionately call Bump after the cartoon elephant) did an hour long exercise routine that consisted of the same 2 moves repeated over and over, starting at 11.30 every night. As mean as it sounds I was glad when his health kick failed!

Wow, 11.30 to do exercise. Ugh.

I'm going to need to remember to do things to curb sounds as we've just moved onto a 4th floor flat. I'm hoping as it's a converted warehouse that the floors are really solid! We don't hear many other sounds than the chair scraping... Fingers crossed it doesn't get worse!

He started it at 2am one Saturday night! I think he was drunk though as it was more erratic sounding than usual. We often try to work out what exactly he was doing - it went slow creak, slow creak, pause, thud thud thud and straight back into the slow creak- for a solid hour every night! Fascinating but really really annoying!

A few of my friends live in converted warehouses in Manchester/ Ancoats area and their flats always seem super quiet when I've stayed over so I do think the thick walls help. Where I live is a converted hotel and it's an old building but you can hear everything above and below.

Ooh, just think, you could live in the hotel my relatives ran! I've no idea which one it was though, and there's no one alive that would remember. But that would be cool! I can definitely see how a converted hotel would be difficult.

One thing I'm struggling with is when to wash clothes. I'm doing them in the day time at the moment as it seems like the least annoying time (assuming others can hear, I can't hear anyone else's, but we're the top floor). But we have economy 7 (cheaper rate at night as we only have electric), so it feels like I should do it at night... but that doesn't seem fair, if I assume others can hear it. It's hard to believe they can't! When I've lived in flats, I've always lived in a top floor flat (because I KNOW other people walking around will drive me nuts) so I don't know how bad it can be.

I always do washing in the middle of the night. Even if other people can hear it, it isn't the type of noise that keeps people awake or annoys them.

How cool would that be if it was your relative's hotel?? Seeing as it can never be proved or disproved I'm just going to believe that it is!

Funny you should say that about washing, I just accidentally set the washing machine to the highest spin and sat there the whole time cringing at it shaking the whole building!

I also made the discovery last night that downstairs' kitchen seems to back onto our under-the-stairs cupboard (we have a weird duplex/ split level thing going on where our downstairs is on the same level as their upstairs) so all our coats smell like chip fat now from it coming though the vent!