Neighbour Problems - Advice?

Soldato
Joined
5 Nov 2011
Posts
5,462
Location
Derbyshire
Hi everyone.

Really saddened to get to this point but I don't know who to go to so thought I'd ask around. I'll shorten this as much as I can.

Relationship was initially ok, they are in their 65+ maybe 70s. We are 30's with kids and are modern enough not to want a tight knit relationship with our neighbour.

Fast forward:

Neighbour phoned me swearing down the phone due to us "blocking him" on his drive. He phoned the police. My mums car was 1 inch onto the drop curb.
Mum went to move car and he came out swearing and threatening my mum, I moved his finger he was pointing in my mums face towards me and asked him to threaten someone who wouldn't back down.
Neighbour spent the next 3 months both him and his family parking as close to our vehicles as he could (literally mm's gaps left).

Lady from next door poked head out of window and shouted ***** at my then fiance, fiance went round to ask what the problem was (yep shouldn't have done that). She wanted to speak to the woman only but the man got very abusive and physically had to be restrained by his wife. We phoned the police and they fully admitted what they had done. Police advised them to leave us alone.

Old man comes out of house whilst I am carrying my now wifes wedding dress inside following our reception party swearing at me and calling me every name under the sun. I ignore him.

Old man starts coming to my place of work asking to see my boss for no reason. He is nothing to do with my work, not a customer anything. Just wanted to complain about an employees illegal activities. My boss refuses to see him and I call the police, neighbour is again advised to not harass me or mu family at home or work.

Old man invites me round, thinking this would be an end to it and he'll tell me his medication has been wrong or something I go round. He gives me some 50+ pages about party wall agreements and that the TV aerial I have lashed on the chimney is breaking the law and I am trespassing but if I give him access to my WiFi he will forget all about it. He also says I am lucky he hasn't charged me for the paper and solicitor fees for the 50+ page document. I left quietly.

Old man starts shouting at me in the front garden as I'm bringing children inside from the car about the "trees" growing under the wall between us. The 2 weeds are getting longer and yeah they probably need killing but shouting, swearing etc isn't the way of going about it.
I go back into my garden and he is F ing and swearing about what has he done wrong and how arrogant I am etc etc etc.

Wife tells me of odd incident in garden where she felt she was being watched. She look sup and old lady has her head out of the windows but with net curtain over it staring at her, she waves, says hi and old lady goes back in.

Wife has another odd feeling of being watched. We replay CCTV of the time and I catch old lady moving loose slat in fence panel to look at my children who have been playing in the garden. I screwed slat in place.

Fast forward to recent bank holiday, kids are playing in garden and we have an echo dot on, not loud but old man goes out to his shed and turns his music up, I usher kids into my cave so they can hear music, he turns his up full volume. Kids can't hear their music and we give up, turn off and go into the house.

That was it though, I wait until kids are inside, old man turns off and starts to go in and I verbally let loose, I shouldn't have but I got it all out.
All neighbour can come back with is that they are going to phone social services and get our kids taken off us because my wife is never there. Reality is I no longer have a work van due to new job and take the 1 car we have.
they also admitted to videoing us and our children regularly. They have CCTV but I don't think it catches us so this must be some kind of hand held if at all.

We have a neighbour at the back of both our houses who happened to catch my wife earlier today who confirmed that he often sees the neighbours standing in the windows staring at us and our children and that the couple have previously caused lots of problems with neighbours.

It's the bit about watching my children which is really getting to me. We don't want to repair a relationship with them, they have gone too far but we do want them to leave us alone and stop causing trouble. They are an old couple and I do appreciate they likely get lonely and don't have a lot better to do but we have our life which we want to be happy as well. I don't want to move and if we did I'd have to declare the police incidents to the buyer.

Who can I go to? What can I do? My wife and I feel miserable about our house and trapped as we can't move and feel under constant scrutiny.
 
So they've been warned twice about harassing you by police and yet have continued.
Solicitor/police again at this point tbh.
Keep a written log of all events, keep copies of any CCTV footage to support the log.

After reading most of the responses on here, a log and then pursue with the police seems the most likely option for us now.

At this point i think all you can do is lodge an official complaint about harassment, and then look down the route of a restraining order.
At least that way the police can actually do something other than have a word with them.

I would love a restraining order but all that would do surely is stop them from shouting at us? It wouldn't help my or my wifes nerves that they could be stood in their bedrooms staring down at our children

I don't care that they're old, they should know better.
Back to the police/solicitor. I'd inform the police they admitted filming your kids.

They should know better. Where I live isn't exactly known for being "bleeding edge" though and most of the town are still mourning the loss of the mines lol.

(since I read it my opinion.. obviously don't need to present an objective log here , but keep one for the police.)
... all sounds a bit proposterous - you have no idea what the underlying issue is ? ie, no proceeding inconsiderate parking on road on your part with works van (if you both have drives), no excessive noise ? the suggestion that they somehow want to interact with you through lonliness misplaced too, sounds like, as for yourselves, you would prefer if one another were not there.
can't see why you wouldn't have take the fence peering CCTV to the police if you thought it was incriminating, or for that matter incident of shouted abuse from the window.

We have no idea, we have never been abusive or even argumentative towards them. From the start they wanted to be "best friend/neighbours" and us go round for drinks but that's not us, we have 4 children and we don't drink. My work van and our can were always parked on our drive as we've seen him be funny with people parking on the front dropping off for the school which is some 50 meters down the road. The only excessive noise would be children playing in the garden.
We would prefer them to leave us alone, we don't want an intimate relationship with our neighbours, the people the other side and at the back seem to manage this fine, just a "hi" if you see them in passing is plenty.
We caught them peering through a fence hole once, it was THEM who told us they are recording us and the neighbour at the back who said they are constantly stood in the upstairs windows staring at our kids, as much as I'd love to, I can't stop someone standing in their own bedroom but it is starting to affect my wifes comfort at home.

Tell them you will let out to a [insert different race to neighbour] family of they don't pack it in.
If they carry on borrow a too let sign and stick it in the front garden.

This made me laugh, when I first bought my house a whispered comment was "if you're racist and/or homophobic you'll be fine". See above point, the town feels like it's still in mourning for the mine so this is probably actually a really good idea.

Move house. It'll always be toxic now. I know you shouldn't have to, but it's the only way to get some peace.

We thought that, I'm fixed in for another 3 years on my mortgage and houses are cheap in my town because of where it is. Not a terrible place to live just not valued very highly which was great picking up a 4 bed semi with good garden to bring the kids up in, I really hate that we should have to give up our home because of people who are intolerant to changing culture (ie we don't want to be their new best friends).


To everyone else who said log it, thank you, I think we will go down this route and then present that to the police. We don't want mediation, we just need someone with authority to tell them to leave us alone.
 
You're not allowed to video your neighbours from private land - not sure if it's civil or criminal though. It's even more serious when it's kids, and i was suggesting the possibility of your kids being filmed while splashing around might be interesting information for any police reports.

With you. OK I'll check into the legality of it, I only really looked as far as CCTV previously but I guess handheld is somewhat more intentional. Reporting them videoing our kids in a paddling pool would very likely cause a visit and a full report and as daft as this sounds, they haven't admitted to "that" so wouldn't we be lying to the police to get our story heard?

My endgame here is a quiet life (if that is at all possible in any walk of life).
 
I am sure the problem with selling up and moving, is that you need to inform any potential buyers of any issues with neighbours where the police have been involved.

Correct. I think if there was an incident within the recent 5 years you have to declare it. I am trying to avoid this as involving the police would cause an incident and mean we are lowering the chances of us selling the house and making the situation tougher whilst we are here.
 
Cheap body Cam to record any future interactions with them so you can supply police or solicitor with footage? I would wait it out and not move house. As get police reports completed stop them being aggressive and wait for them to die :)

I have 4 kids aged 2,4,6 & 8. I'll have an army of teenagers in 10 years time, if that doesn't finish the codgers off then I don't know what would.
 
If they have CCTV or any potential videos, I'd be submitting a written request to see all footage, under the basis that you believe they are capturing you. Legally, they have to provide you with a copy.
https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/domestic-cctv-systems-guidance-for-people-using-cctv/

This is a little gem, even if it was questionable a formal looking letter would likely put a scare factor into place.

Report him as a peado.

What a can of worms to open though.
 
I noticed from your man cave thread your fence is quite small, expensive I know, but could you build a higher fence so they can't see over and communicate?

Stalker!

To be fair the fence is a "normal" 6ft high fence. I wasn't aware I could have higher than that. For an additional 2ft reprieve it would give as well it wouldn't help with the upstairs bedroom staring but certainly is an idea I'll consider. It may help a bit with the day to day feeling of unease in the garden.
 
- you have CCTV too so the can reciprocate a demand you make.

still - all doesn't make sense
Police didn't form some kind of opinion of any basis for their hassling from previous interventions ? or, he was totally incoherent.
If they had filmed with any concerns of child supervision they would have called the SS
The idea that they wanted a closer relationship, but then U-turned
..mediation service of some kind via another neighbour who can try and understand their problem-

I'm fine with that. My CCTV points at MY property and isn't doing anything it shouldn't. I don't believe I fall into needing to be GDPR compliant reading through the ICO documentation. I am already anticipating their response so I'll likely fill out a SAR response anyway straight after filling in the SAR to send to them (to be on the front foot).

The Police handled the 2 incidents individually and on both occasions strongly advised them verbally to stay away from us and leave us alone.

Yes they did seem to U-turn, almost like they didn't like us not wanting to be best mates with them. He come's across as a bully and they don't like being told no. Even before this he was trying to tell me what colout I should be painting my garden wall at the front and got disgruntled when I didn't paint it.

We don't want mediation, they've gone too far for us to want to repair any relationship, threatening to and being held back from harming my partner? Why would I want to be "ok" with this person?
 
Is that building adjacent to their side?
Perhaps that's wound them up a bit, nobody likes things changing next to them, and if he's as picky as you make him sound, I can imagine a massive grey concrete shed appearing along his fence line would be viewed as some sort of monstrosity. More so if it's permitted development and there's not a sod he can do about it.

Yes it is on the adjoining fence line (not up against it) and there wasn't a murmur from them. We moved in some 4 years ago and they "kicked off" about 2 years ago. If it is my cave then no wonder they're salty.
 

now seeing the build pictures .. looks like a contributory cause, unless they explicitly said it was not impacting them ?
but - OK - if you had shown them full mock-ups of what it would look like ... can't see which way the sunlight goes. ... assume your cctv doesn't flood-light their garden.

(in minor comparison neighbours got - must be 3m ridge garden data center/shed (IR footprint from space I speculate) 5m off of the back of our 15m back garden .. diminishes our view+value, but not his, with 80m garden - but, there before we were.)

Cave has never been mentioned by neighbour. Hardly a reason to start recording my children because they don't like my shed though?
 
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