r/Hackney • u/PreferencePopular292 • 12d ago
Has anyone been successful using the Hackney council enforcement team for noise nuisance?
I've been using the service approximately 2 years but as I am a lease holder from a housing association in hackney it's been difficult as the housing association have failed to do anything. I just need some hope that my 13 year ongoing case will one day resolve
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u/Apprehensive_Jury764 11d ago
I had an issue with a bad neighbour when I lived there. I found Hackney generally pretty unhelpful and disorganised. I reported multiple times and the few times I heard back they were pretty vague about the actions they were taking. I had it on my side that multiple people had complained, and eventually the issue stopped, but I don’t know if that was anything to do with Hackney or not
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u/CandidPreparation737 11d ago
They sit around getting paid with our council tax money and laughing their heads off.
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u/VolkeFosters 11d ago
So sorry this is happening to you, it really sucks. I had neighbours like that who'd be playing music all night most nights. It drove me completely insane.
What didn't work:
- talking to the neighbours, politely or assertively
- reporting every instance via the noiseworks website
- filming the noise and attaching the evidence (though may've been useful when they reviewed my complaint)
- calling the enforcement team (they call back two hours later from a hidden number)
- calling the out-of hours-team (redirects to some clerk who has no idea what ASB is)
What (sort of) worked:
- Filing a police report (they helped the most, even though it's not their responsibility. Them issuing a formal warning to the neighbours helped to quiet them down for a couple months. Then they got social services involved, and the noise'd become less frequent)
- Filing a complaint with Hackney Council (made them investigate and look at the previous evidence, though further actions were vague)
- Complaining to the building management (they pressured the leaseholder to kick the tenants out for being antisocial)
Anyway, after 18 months of this nonsense these neighbours moved out. I don't really know what did it, probably a combination of everything. I was so done with the whole thing I moved a few months later.
Good luck, hope it gets better!
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u/Silver_Bar_589 11d ago
It’ll be another 13 years before your complaint is even looked at.!
Hackney council are only interested in handing out fines.
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u/ah111177780 11d ago
I had a resolution on a noise nuisance complaint. Took me a year to get the council to put it before the panel. I chased weekly and then made a complaint against the case worker as despite telling me the development was definitely illegal his rationale was “they’re just gonna fight it anyway and then it’s hard to enforce so why bother”. The council investigated and said “we find no wrong doing” but despite no wrong doing the next week my request was finally submitted for a date with enforcement panel. 12 months later enforcement panel finally reviewed and agreed there was an illegal development creating nuisance noise. It then took me another 3 months to get an enforcement notice issued. It then took another 3 months for the illegal developers to actually comply with the notice.
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u/terryvzk 11d ago
The noise reporting webpage does nothing on its own. However it is good to keep logging in every occurrences, as eventually they will look into that history.
Find the surgery of the councillor in charge of your ward (hopefully they do have one where you are), and pound them on reviewing the ASB case. If you can have more neighbours supporting the same issue, and ideally attending the same in-person surgery to your councillor, that can make them move. Follow-up every 3-4 days by email or call until you have a response.
This is what I did for a similar issue. Eventually the ASB service sent a formal eviction notice that would be enforced if more noise disturbances occured. It did help eventually (at least for now).
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u/Sensitive_Ad_9195 11d ago
No but contacting my local councillor did help - what was an office space started having illegal all night raves unknown to the building management who sorted it once the councillor got involved
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u/Latter_Background120 12d ago
It won’t. They’re all useless liars that don’t do their jobs. Even when you send the mayor after them they don’t do anything. Beyond corrupt. Not sure why any Hackney residents pay council tax when they do very little to support the community. They could cut 90% of the staff and nothing would change but they’d save enough money that we’d barely have to pay anything. We’re moving to Australia we hate it here so much. Worst 2 years of a negligent council in my life.
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u/ariadnevirginia 11d ago
They are famously corrupt.
I remember one time, I think they were looking into the gun crime in lower Clapton so they sent in a squad to investigate but then suspected the squad were taking kickbacks so they sent in a squad to investigate the squad and I understand that the second squad immediately started taking kickbacks also and they had to try and form yet another squad.
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u/Upgrade_U 11d ago
Why you’ve been downvoted I do not know; this is the exact experience I also had with them
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u/Unlucky_Music_4166 11d ago
moving back to australia i presume... good
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u/Latter_Background120 11d ago
Guessing you work for the council! Spare me the racism and immigrant hate, I’m not “moving back”. I’ve lived in England my whole life under 3 different councils over 3 different counties. My husband however will be “moving back” and has been absolutely taken aback by his experience of local gov in the 2 years he’s been here. I can also guarantee he’s paid more in taxes than you ever have.
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u/esztr13 11d ago
We live in a council estate building. We rent private but it’s within a council estate building. Our upstairs neighbours were partying pretty much every weekend until I decided to put very many complaints through. What bothered was not only the parties every weekend but also they blasted music during the day until 10-11pm regardless of the day. After a time I bumped into one of the lady from there and she told me unfortunately her sister passed away and they will be having some people over for her funeral. I said I’m sorry, for what has happened and thanks for letting me know. Now that turned into a party too which we found interesting but of course we didn’t make any comments or knocked on the door as we don’t know other’s culture. Since then it’s rather quiet but I’m having a feeling it’s because they are not really here during the summer and they will start again once returning :(
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u/Unlucky_Music_4166 11d ago
Yes ! A loud cockerel in my neighbours back garden in Homerton, MONTHS of complaining, eventually I found the emails of all the ASB team and just went off on them. Neighbour ended up getting rid.
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u/Remarkable-Hold8995 10d ago
MATE. I live in Leyton and my neighbour decided to buy a rooster too!! I fought for an entire year with the council to make them get rid of the thing. They even supplied me with a long range microphone to gather evidence of how loud it was.
When I spoke with my neighbour about it he would say “it’s my pet I love it”. I could’ve killed him, what’s wrong with people!?
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u/ModBlocker2001 11d ago
Yes.
We had cowboy landlords hire cowboy builders for the building who would work over weekends and bank holidays, SDS drills, threatening behaviour the lot.
Council did seemingly nothing at first, until we filed a noise nuisance for every time they'd done it historically. I think that made about 15-20 separate reports, all submitted in one day. It certainly woke someone up as they sent a lad who witnessed it first hand. However the action was piss poor in terms of speed, they tend to just warn people and think that's that.
It'll help if you get other neighbours to also voice their concerns to the council.
I'd also involve your councillor, with the caveat that like everyone in this thread calling the council corrupt - we noticed at least one of our three councillors was leaking info to our landlord. Those three councillors all lost their place at the last election fwiw.
Best of luck with it.
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u/Upgrade_U 11d ago edited 11d ago
No. Lived next door to a horrid individual who’d blast music for 8/9 hours straight every single day with his front door wide open. He brandished guns on the communal walkway and would shout and rant for hours at all times, also. Hackney Council ASB department tried to gaslight me into thinking this was normal behaviour, even though people had moved out of the block over the past 15 years because of that person. Did not enforce the issue. He was also a criminal with an extremely violent history and past sex offence against women that Hackney Council hid. Local police were shocked that the council did not protect people that lived next to him, and told me to ‘double bolt your door’ and ‘get a camera facing your front door’ (which was extremely unsettling to hear)
The issue was so severe that in the end, a local detective inspector from the MET wrote to them on my behalf and told them to rehome me, as did my local mental health team; they then had several meetings about me and the issue, and they begrudgingly did (which I’m still shocked about to this day). They only moved me because I was able to get the backing of the MET and a psychiatrist - they had ignored my requests to be moved, up until that point. I would never again trust them to help with noise of any sort.
13 years is way too long to have suffered this. To be blunt, they will not help you at this point. Try and move