A woman who says a new family next door has ruined her evenings with loud music and late parties is wondering if she’s being unreasonable to complain. Wanting an opinion on whether her reaction was justified, she took to Mumsnet to see what others said. She posted on July 10 in the Am I Being Unreasonable forum, and the thread pulled in more than 300 replies. About 60% of the readers sided with the woman.
The woman said she lives in a row of period terraced houses she used to consider peaceful. The family that moved in last year eats outside and plays heavy dance music through dinner and into most evenings, she said, often all day at weekends, with their large bifold doors left open so she can hear their kitchen conversations from her own yard. She said she can no longer enjoy her own outdoor space.
She said the household throws tons of frequent parties, some with as many as 30 guests, that run until around midnight, with tons of loud sounds. One of the loudest, she said, was a second birthday party with roughly 30 people that went past midnight. Kids kick footballs into her yard and come get them themselves, and she said she’s overheard the family discussing buying a projector to watch a match outside, which obviously could make for an issue.
She said that she’s asked them to lower the music three times. They ignored her when they had guests, she said, or told her politely that it was not late, once at 8 p.m., after the music had been thumping since about 2 p.m. They did turn it down when she complained at 9 a.m. on a Sunday. She described feeling “angry and helpless at the same time,” said she has mostly stopped eating outside, and said she has thought about moving, though she can’t really afford to.
Why the Complaint is So Divisive
Image Credit: Mumsnet.
Many replies were sympathetic to the woman. Several in the replies shared their own histories of living beside loud neighbors. And many said that, while the neighbors are inconsiderate, they’re not doing anything that the police would act on. One user recounted resolving a similar situation by leaning out a window and asking the family next door to quiet down. That got an apology and a bunch of flowers, though she noted it helped that those neighbors were renting and worried about a landlord complaint.
Some said the neighbors hadn’t done anything wrong. One user compared the complaint to griping about a passenger reclining an airplane seat. Another pushed back on the woman’s description of her street as one of the nicer ones in the area. The woman accepted the point, agreeing that the noise would be irritating anywhere — and that it wasn’t just about where she was located or her financial status.
Can a UK Council Do Anything About Daytime Noise?
One sympathetic commenter told the woman that councils will not act on noise between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m., and that is a common misconception rather than the law. GOV.UK says councils can investigate statutory nuisance complaints and deal with noise produced at any hour of the day or night. The 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. window belongs to a separate, narrower system under the Noise Act 1996, which lets councils issue warning notices for night-time noise over set decibel levels. Statutory nuisance under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 has no such cutoff.
Courts have held that noise from the ordinary and reasonable use of a home is not a statutory nuisance, so everyday living sounds do not qualify. An environmental health officer weighs how long the noise lasts, how often it happens, how loud it is, and what time of day it occurs. The usual first step is to keep a noise diary for at least two weeks and bring it to the council’s environmental health team. That’s close to what one commenter suggested when she pointed the woman toward her council’s environmental officer. Anywhere else in the world, though? Your experience is going to vary wildly.