Noisy neighbours – What can I do?

People are more likely to have disputes with their neighbours than anyone else, and of those disputes the most common cause is noise. Noisy neighbours can make many people’s homes feel uninhabitable. Legal redress is available, but should be treated as a last resort. Here's how to deal with noisy neighbours.

Angela Kerr Director, Editor

Here are the steps you can take if you are having issues with noisy neighbours.

How to deal with noisy neighbours summarised

• Approach your neighbour politely about the noise.
• Try to mitigate the problem with sound-proofing measures.
• Seek mediation if the problem persists.
• Make a noise complaint to your council.
• Take legal action if necessary.
• Contact the freeholder if it’s a leasehold property.

Get advice from a qualified professional to explore your options and to understand how to deal with a neighbour dispute. Get neighbour dispute advice now.

Talk to your neighbours about noise disturbance

It sounds like a cliché, but it’s usually good to talk to your neighbours. One in three people have found that this has solved any noise problems immediately. Surprisingly often, people do not even realise they are being annoying and few people are totally uncaring about those around them; most are just unaware.

How should you raise the noise issue with your neighbour?

It’s all about timing. For example, it may well be counterproductive to approach them in the middle of a party. It might be better to catch them in a public area and talk to them there, or over the garden fence, instead of awkwardly knocking on their door.

• With most people, being calm and reasonable gets better results than being confrontational. You have the moral high ground; make sure you keep it.
• When you approach them, it is a good idea to have three examples of when they were excessively noisy to hand, complete with dates. Tell them too how the noise affected you, but don’t be accusatory. Rather than saying, “you kept me awake”, tell them, “I could not sleep because of the noise that night.”
• You should also specifically tell them how you would like the problem solved. For example, you might ask them not to practice on their drums after 10pm, or you might ask that next time they have a big party, they give you some forewarning so you can make other plans accordingly.
• Only talk to your neighbour if you feel safe and comfortable.

Looking for help with a Noisy Neighbour Dispute? Get advice from a legal expert. Get instant quotes now.

Neighbour disputes and selling your house

If you’re selling your house and you’ve had a dispute with a neighbour, you may need to disclose it in the TA6 property information form you’ll need to complete. What constitutes a dispute is left open to interpretation. But if you’ve made a complaint to the council or another authority about the behaviour of your neighbours, or if you have contacted them directly in writing, then you should declare this.

How to sound proof your rooms and home

Here are a few options to help you reduce the amount of outside noise coming through into your home:

• Check your doors. Check your internal doors are solid rather than hollow as this can be a great barrier to sound. Draught proof your front door, as well as internal doors to stop sound coming through.
• Fix holes and gaps in walls. Fill any holes or gaps around window frames, ventilation grates, and electrical sockets.
• Updating to double glazing. An expensive option but one which can make a huge difference to how much external noise enters your home.
• Dampen sounds with fabric. Heavy curtains can make a significant difference to how much sound travels into you home particularly at night. Double glazed windows, lined with plantation shutters and dressed with thick curtains is the ideal. Thick carpet and rugs will help limit sound travelling up from downstairs and also muffle your footsteps for your neighbours.
• Insulate your walls with sound proofing. Depending on where the main source of external noise is coming from you may consider soundproofing the party wall (the wall adjoining you and your neighbours home) or whole rooms including walls, floors and ceilings.

Noisy neighbours – taking part in mediation

Sound proofing aside, if you have talked to your neighbours about noise problems and nothing you say seems to work, you may consider mediation as your next step. Mediation can be a particularly good choice if you have completely fallen out with your neighbours or if you are in other disputes with them. It’s a good idea to get advice from a solicitor who is experienced in mediation at this stage.

Mediation involves the following:

• A professionally trained mediator will set up a meeting with you and your neighbour.
• The meeting will often be at a neutral location.
• The aim is to help your neighbour understand your point of view, and vice versa.
• Mediators will also suggest specific compromises and ways to remedy the problem.
• Mediation is government funded but does not involve the law.
• Mediation is free, and is often successful.
• However, it is voluntary, so your neighbour will have to want to go.

Looking for help with a Noisy Neighbour Dispute? Get expert legal advice and instant quotes.

Getting the council involved

If your neighbours are still making noise, you may choose to get the local authority involved. But make sure you’ve tried other avenues first. The government website says: ‘You should always try and solve the problem by talking to your neighbour or through mediation before contacting the council’.

What to bear in mind when you make a noise complaint to the council

• Getting the council involved could raise tensions with your neighbour and the dispute might escalate —  your neighbours could ultimately end up in court.
• As we explain above, you should also be aware that any official noisy neighbour complaints will go on record and could make it harder for you to sell your house.

What happens when you make a noise complaint to the council?

• After you complain, the council will send your neighbour a letter telling them that people have complained. They will not say who has complained.
• At the same time, you will be asked to fill out a “noise diary” which logs the time and place you heard the noise and from where it came. Most importantly, the council wants to see how the noise is affecting you. The council will use your noise diary to establish a method of investigating. This might depend on you phoning somebody up who will come round to hear the noise or they might install noise monitoring equipment.
• If the noise does not stop after they have warned your neighbours they might take other, official, action.
• In the instance the council agrees with you, and the noise is a deemed a “statutory nuisance” (ie that it is a nuisance under law), they can issue an “abatement notice” which tells your neighbour that unless they stop they will be prosecuted and might end up with a fine of £5,000 for domestic premises and £20,000 for industrial or commercial premises. When the council follows this process, it can take some time, because the council has to establish how much of a nuisance your neighbours are being without living with you all the time.

Noise disputes – Getting expert legal help

If the council has rejected your complaint you may wish to take legal action with the help of a specialist property dispute solicitor. Or you may want to do this instead of complaining to your council if you want to bring a claim for damages and obtain an injunction rather than having an abatement notice served.

You can instruct your solicitor to write to the neighbour regarding the noise nuisance asking that they “cease and desist”. Sometimes a simple and relatively inexpensive solicitors’ letter can solve the problem. It certainly tells your neighbour that you are taking the dispute seriously.

If that initial solicitors’ letter is not successful, your solicitors will usually suggest trying mediation. This is likely to be considerably quicker, less confrontational and cheaper than taking the matter to court.

However, if that fails you may opt to take the case to court to get an injunction to stop the noise and claim for damages. But bear in mind that legal battles against a neighbour can be expensive and stressful.

Looking for help with a Noisy Neighbour Dispute? Get advice from a qualified professional to explore your options.

Leaseholders – noisy neighbours

If the neighbour is a leaseholder, they may well be in breach of a clause in their lease about not disturbing neighbours with noise. If you are in a flat, and it is the floorboards that are the problem, check the lease. There may be a clause that says that suitable floor covering must be in place.

Some leases say that the leaseholders must not make noise audible outside their property at certain times (such as between 11pm and 7am). Leases sometimes also ban pets (if it is a barking dog that is the problem) and musical instruments.

If you complain to the freeholder (from whom the leaseholder leases the property), they can issue a warning or start legal proceedings against the leaseholder for breaching their lease. Because they could potentially lose their property, this can be a very effective way of making your neighbours take noise seriously.