“When the noise is really bad, my whole building shakes. I can feel the vibrations through the floorboards – and this is two floors up.” For years, Bianca’s life in her central London council flat has been made miserable by one extremely noisy neighbour.
They may not share a wall, but thanks to the man’s “massive” sound system and frequent parties, says Bianca, the noise has seriously affected her mental health. If she protests to her neighbour, he will crank the volume up twice as loud.
Her council did investigate her repeated complaints, but nothing has changed. Her work has suffered and she has been prescribed tranquillisers. “The result is that now, the second I hear any noise at all I get panicky and think, oh my God, how long is this going to go on for, how loud is this going to be? I feel really helpless.”
Unwelcome noise from an inconsiderate neighbour is nothing new, but the death of Mark Pearce, who took his own life after a UK housing association failed to address his complaints about a noisy neighbour, has thrown the issue into painful relief.
To some, noise might seem like a minor problem, but the distress it can cause is very real, says Mike Talbot, the chief executive and founder of UK Mediation, which advises on resolving disputes. “It’s just so close to home when you lie in bed at night and you can hear somebody’s noise – it never stops. If you’re coming home to an environment which is extremely stressful or threatening sometimes, that is very, very difficult.”
Dozens of Guardian readers who got in contact to share their own experiences with neighbour noise would agree. “I can’t move as I can’t afford to, and I feel trapped,” says Eleanor, who rents privately in the West Country, where she says her ceiling is so thin she can hear her upstairs neighbour on the toilet.
“It’s being kept up until 4am and woken early with loud bangs, heavy stomping, guitar practising for five hours a day until after 2am, etc,” says Eleanor. She has been made unwell by stress, she says, but repeated complaints to her landlord, letting agency and council have had little effect.
Ali says he has cried at work from stress and exhaustion caused by the man who lives below his ex-council flat. “I find myself getting anxious about going home and worrying about whether the neighbour will be in. We asked the council if they would buy the flat off of us and have considered moving out. I can see why people have considered suicide over it. It really plays with your mind.”
Where complaints to landlords and councils have no effect, some feel they have no option but to turn to the law. “We are seeing a concerning number of noise complaints,” says Manjinder Kaur Atwal, the director of housing at Duncan Lewis solicitors. A lawyer can check that agencies are complying with their own noise policies, she says, or apply for a mandatory order to force landlords to carry out mitigation works.
She advises requesting a copy of a social landlord’s noise complaints policy, contacting the local authority’s environmental health department to assess the noise nuisance, “and if the tenant is not getting anywhere, then I would strongly advise them to seek legal assistance”.
Talbot says Covid may have magnified the problem for many people, but social media has undoubtedly made things worse too. “Once people start bitching about each other on Facebook, it’s usually got to a bad place.”
For that reason, Talbot advises trying to resolve issues early, and picking a good time and place to speak to your neighbour, rather than having an angry row at 2am when they are drunk and defensive.
He says: “But there is also a societal, cultural [problem], which is that quite often we don’t get to know our neighbours. The first time you speak to them is when you’re asking them to turn the music down.
“So another recommendation we always give people is to get to know your neighbour. Don’t make the first conversation the conflict conversation.”
• Some names have been changed in this piece
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
