I am a Landlord of a ground floor flat in a building in Rickmansworth.
I have received a message today from my tenant that the late night high volume of the TV from the immediate upper floor flat is disturbing them a lot. I know what he is saying because when I was living there in that flat I was also experiencing the high volume of TV. But I don’t get disturbed by noise so I never had any issues. The guy from the upper floor has got hearing issues hence he plays his TV at loud volume even on late nights.
If I see from my tenants point of view then they are right about the disturbance they are getting especially late nights. On the other hand, the guy on the upper floor has hearing problems.
This is such a difficult one. My daughter suffered from loud noise from a deaf neighbour and, after months and months of disturbed sleep, and feeling totally shattered, when the neighbour had gone to bed without turning the TV off, she went and banged on his door so loudly that she was making more noise than the TV itself. She had become a mad-woman from months of disturbed sleep. Although deaf, the noise she made woke him up. The matter was never resolved until the deaf neighbour moved out. People are selfish and don’t care and I’m not sure there is any recourse to justice.
Thanks for your response.
Unfortunately, in my case, the guy with having hearing issues is the owner of the flat hence he would not be leaving. Also, this guy is a member of the management team of the building. That means, I cannot complain to him against himself.
I think the tenant needs to take it to his local council. It’s not really for the landlord to resolve problems with neighbours in my opinion. And all councils do have a noise nuisance team. Get the phone out of courtesy for him to call.
Colin, this is history now and not worth talking about, especially since you do not know that her neighbour, on the other side, works for the Council. She didn’t want to cause ructions within the block. I have nothing further to say since this is not my thread.
Hi Marcos, I will check it with the council. If it is the tenants who has to deal with filing a complaint then it will be good. Because I dont want to act as a middle man jumping between my tenants and the other guy
The council have an environemtal crime unit
Log your complaint to them
Noise between 11pm to 7am ( if execssive) is unacceptable
You can also report it to the police
Your tenants can do this directly or you can do it on their behalf
Record the noise volume on your phone and send them the recording
The tenant will be asked to keep records ( an ASBO logbook)
Your argument has more leverage if another neighbour is disturbed
If the neighbour is a tenant and does not do anything the council will approach the landlord
If the neighbour is a homeowner you won’t really get much luck
The council are usually very helpful in such matters
If your tenants are good I would advise you to be proactive and help them
You don’t want to lose good tenants because of this
Many times we keep quiet about issues the frustration builds up and when we finally speak out we do so in a way that doesn’t encourage the other party to be helpful.
Most probably the neighbour isn’t aware that the TV is disturbing others, and if asked politely if he can keep it down because “work in the morning” 99% of the times people are will react respectfully and will do something to try and reduce the noise.
The neighbour is definitely aware of it as this has been happening for about 3 months. There were communications initiated by my tenants mentioning to him about the loudness.
I had to intervene and I sent an email to the neighbour. He mentioned that he tried his best to keep the noise levels down. He agreed that couple of times it had happened that he fall asleep while the television was still playing. He said that he will set up an alarm in case he sleeps again while watching his TV.
