Noisy neighbours

[AleisterCrowley]

Must be a common problem....

I live in a large Victorian block, converted to ~20 flats
New tenants moved in to flat above late last year
Not sure how many tenants officially, but seem to be children there regularly, prob in the 5-8 age range
I have had intermittent noise problems since before Christmas, particularly from their lounge which is above mine.
Main issue is running around and stamping on the floor, which I assume is the kids. It's not TV/music etc.
They also keep odd hours, often returning after midnight, and talking in corridor adjacent to my bedroom (which is annoying as I have to get up for work) The children don't seem to have a 'bedtime' so it was noisy last night until nearly 11pm.

I rent via a local agency, tenants above rent from private landlord (I have had dealings with him before when previous tenants flooded my lounge!)
Block managed by management co (Castle Eden)

What's my first move?
I had a word with a female tenant when it was bad before Christmas, and she was reasonably helpful on that occasion, but frequency and duration of disturbance seems to have got worse again.

Do I try a direct approach again?
Contact my letting agent?
Contact their landlord?
Contact the company who manage the block ?

[richlist]

Children in flats should never be allowed.

Personally I'd do it in the following order...
* directly with the tenants.....and if that doesn't work then contact
* block management.

Contrary to popular belief landlords are not responsible for the noise produced by their tenants. Contacting the landlord is unlikely to result in a positive outcome as the landlord can't do any more than you can i.e. talk with the tenants.

It's difficult to see how your letting agent can produce a positive outcome either....they have virtually no incentive and probably wouldn't see the problem as anything to do with them.

If the personal contact with the tenant doesn't work then contacting the block management should help to resolve. Usually there is a clause in the lease which the block management will quote to the landlord and advise him his tenants are in breach of it.

As a landlord I've been on the receiving end of this situation a few times. Usually the tenants are not aware they are causing a problem but it may take a few visits to resolve.

Good luck.

[AleisterCrowley]

OK I'll try a polite note/word first.
Don't want to get involved in a spat with neighbours, but it's driving me nuts.
I'm not 'fussy' and expect some noise from adjacent flats, but I've been here 16 years and this is the first time I've had a real problem with the upstairs tenants (and there must have been many different ones)

thanks
AC 'Mr Earplugs'

[Clitheroekid]

Contrary to popular belief landlords are not responsible for the noise produced by their tenants. Contacting the landlord is unlikely to result in a positive outcome as the landlord can't do any more than you can i.e. talk with the tenants.

That's not necessarily the case in this type of scenario.

It's virtually certain that all the individual flats will be on more or less identical leases. Nearly all flat leases have a covenant by the tenant with the landlord not to allow the flat to be used in such a way as to cause nuisance to the tenants in other flats.

Also, nearly all flat leases have a covenant by the landlord with the tenant to enforce the covenants in all the other leases.

It would be far more straightforward if you and your neighbours each owned the lease rather than renting from the owner, but the principle's the same.

So if face to face discussions fail you could ask your landlord to ask his landlord (i.e. the freeholder / management company) to enforce the covenants in the lease of the flat above you.

The landlord would then write to the owner of the lease telling him to stop the nuisance, and one would hope that the owner, if only to avoid racking up legal bills for breaking his covenant, would then tell his tenant to stop causing you a nuisance and threaten to turf them out if they don't.

It's all a bit convoluted, but at least the mechanism for enforcing the covenants does exist, so you may as well use it.

[AleisterCrowley]

Thanks CK, useful info
I'll try the informal approach first- and if that doesn't work, its escalation time....

[richlist]

CK is right that there is usually a covenant but getting it enforced is likely to be a very long drawn out affair and the main reason why I didn't mention it.

My experience with managing agents (at least the ones I have dealt with) is that they are reluctant to enforce without using more subtle ways of persuasion. Letters asking for the landlord to take action followed up by warnings of what might ultimately happen and then threats of carrying it out are often used first. This process can take some time, during which the matter is often amicably resolved. But I see little benefit in the OP contacting the landlord personally. I believe it better to let the managing agents deal with the landlord.

[GoSeigen]

CK is right that there is usually a covenant but getting it enforced is likely to be a very long drawn out affair and the main reason why I didn't mention it.

My experience with managing agents (at least the ones I have dealt with) is that they are reluctant to enforce without using more subtle ways of persuasion. Letters asking for the landlord to take action followed up by warnings of what might ultimately happen and then threats of carrying it out are often used first. This process can take some time, during which the matter is often amicably resolved. But I see little benefit in the OP contacting the landlord personally. I believe it better to let the managing agents deal with the landlord.

Richlist,

It looks like you may not have read and fully comprehended CK's suggestion. Note that he was suggesting action via the freeholder whom you didn't mention in your comments above so I presume might have missed in your reading.

GS

[DiamondEcho]

Does your council have a 'Noise Control Team'. Mine do, in fact they made a TV series about them.
Yours probably do too. Let them fight your battles, that's what they're there for.

[richlist]

CK is right that there is usually a covenant but getting it enforced is likely to be a very long drawn out affair and the main reason why I didn't mention it.

My experience with managing agents (at least the ones I have dealt with) is that they are reluctant to enforce without using more subtle ways of persuasion. Letters asking for the landlord to take action followed up by warnings of what might ultimately happen and then threats of carrying it out are often used first. This process can take some time, during which the matter is often amicably resolved. But I see little benefit in the OP contacting the landlord personally. I believe it better to let the managing agents deal with the landlord.

Richlist,

It looks like you may not have read and fully comprehended CK's suggestion. Note that he was suggesting action via the freeholder whom you didn't mention in your comments above so I presume might have missed in your reading.

GS

No I didn't miss that piece of info. Leases differ and the devil is in the detail. Often it's not always a freeholder who deals with these matters. Managing agents are often employed to handle the business on their behalf. Sometimes the freeholder is virtually completely detached from the day to day business. In many of my properties contacting a freeholder would be unlikely to result in anything other than a suggestion to deal with their agents.

[Clitheroekid]

No I didn't miss that piece of info. Leases differ and the devil is in the detail. Often it's not always a freeholder who deals with these matters. Managing agents are often employed to handle the business on their behalf. Sometimes the freeholder is virtually completely detached from the day to day business. In many of my properties contacting a freeholder would be unlikely to result in anything other than a suggestion to deal with their agents.

Generally the covenant to take action against nuisance tenants is given by the landlord, though occasionally it's also given by the management company.

But either way it is a covenant, and is therefore legally binding on the landlord / manco. If they refuse or just can't be bothered to take action the leaseholder can obtain a mandatory injunction forcing them to do so. In my experience, once such a threat is made they will take action.

The trouble is that the vast majority of lease owners have never read their lease and probably wouldn't understand it even if they did. It should be explained to them by their solicitor when they buy the flat, but as conveyancing is nowadays mostly carried out by unqualified numpties, who haven't read the lease themselves (and also wouldn't understand it if they did!) lease owners are often completely ignorant of their rights.

This shouldn't be surprising - it's an inevitable consequence of the race to the bottom in either the buyers' insistence on getting the conveyancing done at the cheapest price or the fact that they are steered towards a complicit conveyancer by the estate agent, who just wants the conveyancer to complete the purchase as quickly as possible. The conveyancers who are in bed with estate agents are far more worried about keeping the agent happy by pushing it through quickly than some `client' they'll probably never see again.

[DiamondEcho]

I still advocate getting your local council to 'fight your battle on your behalf'. I'd a classic nightmare-neighbour situation for several months and they were impervious to attempts (neighbours/managing agent) to moderate their behaviour. Their landlord was also entirely casual about it too, for as long as he could remain so. But after the 2nd council visit and formal warning the situation IIRC was that the tenants AND landlord would be potentially jointly liable for a fine of up to £20k if the Noise Control Team were called out and found a Nuisance still being caused. That woke the landlord up [ ], and those tenants were very soon gone.

The solution was making the absentee landlord's tenants very much HIS problem rather than the neighbours. No distraction of going via a managing agent etc. That and setting the council Noise Team process under way.