What''s the world coming to?
I bought a 2 bed downstairs maisonette a few years ago, in a purpose-built house where
an old lady used to rent the upper maisonette through the council. Sadly, she passed away just over a year ago, and the landlord moved this new family in. They have 2 young kids, which I appreciate does come with a sizable amount of noise you wouldn''t expect to get from a 91 year old lady, but this is taking the biscuit! The kids constantly run riot in the flat, running and stomping on the floors and screaming at the top of their heads, day in day out.
After a couple of unsuccessful attempts at reaching a compromise directly with the parents, I have turned to other options, such as getting in touch with the local
environmental health agency, the council, my local CAB, and even the police. But it seems that I can''t get through to anyone that this is a nuisance that needs to be dealt with. From my
neighbours cheeky retorts ("consider yourself lucky we only have 2 kids") to the reaction from the police whenever I tried to contact them regarding the issue (if anything, you might be the one ending up in trouble.... for shouting at them: yes, it''s come to the point now where I don''t bother coming out to ring their doorbell, I simply open my window and shout to them to stop the f***ing racket!), not to mention the environmental health being totally useless. I filled in countless report forms detailing the incidents, so how come no one even bothered getting back to me about it???
Having taken a closer look at the rules regarding antisocial behaviour and neighbourhood noise, I have discovered - much to my stupefaction, I must say - that noisy children can''t be classed as a nuisance per se. According to the environmental health information, as long as your neighbours aren''t playing loud music outside permitted hours of the day, there is nothing you can do to stop them.
In short, living under what sounds like a herd of charging elephants is no basis for complaint. I work hard, most days on a really early morning start (we''re talking 4am, sometimes even earlier), pay my mortgage and all my taxes, then some strange familiy moves in the neighbourhood and behaves appallingly and with a total disregard for anyone around them, and my only option is to grin and bear the noise?
I say there is a flaw in the system somewhere...