Can this tenant cancel his tenancy due to neighbour noise ?

This is a question to the blog clinic from Dmitrii, who is a tenant in England.

I live in a private rental flat with the lease ending in six months. My upstairs neighbour who owns her flat has not installed carpets on her floors, which is a breach of her lease, and the noise travels through to my flat, which disturbs me 24/7.

I have spoken to her, but she refused to do anything.

I have given the Council a copy of the noise diary, but they have not been in touch. My agency has the same information and has contacted the freeholder about this.

As far as I understand the current situation the agency, as well as the freeholder, are not going to do anything about it in the near future but forcing me to continue paying the rent.

Is there a case here and I can end my tenancy legally?

Answer

I think it is unlikely. The problem you have is caused by your neighbour.  It is not caused by your landlord or his agents. They have no control over your neighbour’s behaviour and are not liable to you for any problems she may cause.

There are only two organisations which could take action:

• The freeholder, and
• The Council

You have been in touch with the council, and the agents have been in touch with the freeholder, neither of whom have done anything.

The Freeholder

So far as the freeholder is concerned, your landlord, through his agents, have probably complied with their obligations to you by contacting them and asking them to take action. They cannot force the freeholder to do anything without taking expensive legal action.

Which, even if they could fund this, is not guaranteed to succeed.

The Council

So far as the Council is concerned, the action they could take would be to send out an officer to monitor the noise. If the officer considered the noise to be sufficiently serious, they could then request your neighbour to take action, failing which they could issue a warning notice and, if this was not complied with, bring court proceedings. We have a post here where a Local Authority did that.

However, that was a considerably more serious case and was brought in 2012 when Councils had better funding. Today, all Councils are struggling financially, and they will probably consider this to be a low priority, bearing in mind all the other serious issues they have to deal with.

So, I am not surprised that they have not responded.  There is a gov.uk page here with further information on the Council’s powers for noise nuisance.

And finally

The only other suggestion I have is for you to check very carefully the rental particulars that were provided to you before you rented the flat.

For example, if they described the flat as ‘quiet’ you may have cause to complain about misrepresentation.

If they have records of past tenants complaining about this, they may be criticised for failing to warn you about it.

If on checking the information that you have you think that the agents did misrepresent the property to you, this may be the basis of a complaint to their Property Redress Scheme.

There is also a procedure under the consumer legislation which you can use to ‘unwind’ your tenancy if you signed the tenancy after being misled but if your landlord refuses to agree, you would need to apply to the Court.  If you are considering this you should take legal advice.  There is a time limit of 90 days from the start of the tenancy, so do not delay.

If you want to take further advice once you have checked your records, there is a telephone advice service on the Renters Guide website.