Our neighbours are at it again. We’ve been suffering their building works since Mar 2010. We are normally fairly laid back people and really did like our neighbours; we even drove the boys to the hospital when their father had a stroke. However, we’ve fought the extension tooth and nail every step of the way.
We objected to the plans on two occasions, the first set were refused they made a few small changes and second set went through to our horror. We’ve had the building inspectors out, called Health and Safety on numerous occasions due to lack of safety equipment, had Environmental Health out as they are burning everything including plastic and god knows what else, called the Fire Department due to unattended bonfires and had all my twitter buddies write to the local council. It did make them stand up and take notice.
Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to do anything about it. Once planning permission is granted there’s really nothing you can do to stop it. It really is disgusting as they’ve been allowed to build on 70% of their garden and it grossly overlooks our property. I showed video to two planning officers who are friends of friends and they said they have never seen anything like it. We’re resigned to it but just want them to finish so we can get on with living undisturbed.
As its winter, we haven’t been spending a lot of time in the garden so we hadn’t noticed the latest infraction. Long before Christmas they were retiling the roof and removed the guttering. Tonight we noticed that they have removed approx a metre of our guttering, which means that the water from our house including two of the neighbours is pouring straight onto our flat roof extension, bear in mind we’ve had monsoon like rain in the last few days. For reference, our house is on the right.
I popped around tonight, to politely ask when the builders would be back to rectify it and apparently they’ve run out of money and don’t know when it will be fixed. I’m sorry, but this isn’t acceptable and not our fault so I will be contacting the council tomorrow and if I don’t get anywhere I will be contacting the authorities as this seems to be ‘wilful damage to property in my books!’ Following that our next step is a solicitor.
I have asked them to replace the guttering and if they don’t we will at their expense. I will only put enough guttering on so it runs onto their house! They have also damaged the rendering on our house.
Have any of you experience this?
Any solicitors in the house want to write them a letter for me pro bono?
What should we do? I don’t feel it’s fair that we should incur any costs.
I’m a Grumpy Old Woman. Are you? Help yourself to a badge.
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