My friend, I'll call her Julie, has asked me to post this thread and to get some advice on a problem which has exasperated her.
Julie lives in a small housing estate of 18 detached 4/5 bed homes with large gardens.
The problem is that Julie's next door neighbour has 4 children who treat Julie's property as their own - they climb over the fence into the back garden when my friend is home and even when she not home; they are constantly in her front garden and, as they're too small to reach the doorbell, they repeatidly kick the front door and the side glass panel to get attention.
When Julie's family are having a meal either in the kitchen (which has large windows and doors at the rear of the house) the kids next door are up on the fence shouting, throwing things into the garden and generally causing a disturbance.
Julie spoke really calmly to her neighbour when it first happened last summer and asked that the kids not climb over the fence into her garden and stand on the fence when they are quietly enjoying their deck / garden or entertaining guests and the response she received was 'it's my fence and if my children want to stand on it or climb over it, then that's fine'.
It's turned into a bit of a feud now with the two female neighbours no longer speaking to each other. Julie last week raised the height of the back garden fence on her side of the boundary to the allowed 2 meters to deter the children. She also installed a heavy wooden gate at the top of the driveway at the front of the property.
Unfortunately, the children are still climbing over the fence at the back - the youngest is 4 years old and her mother seems to think it's okay for her to climb over a 2 meter high fence - and they have discovered that they can crawl under a space at the bottom of the front gate to get access to the front garden and front door.
Julie has asked the children to get off the fence even when the mother or father of the children is in their back garden. The children refuse and the parents do nothing to intervene.
2 days ago the neighbours decided to move their dog kennel from the far side of their house to the side next to Julie's house. This very athletic dog is now climbing up on his kennel, onto the fence, onto my friend's shed roof and is jumping down into her garden, is 'doing his business' all over the place and is terrorising the cat.
My friend asked the neighbour's son to come and get the dog 4 times in one day and the neighbour still hasn't done anything about the problem. The last time she asked him to take the dog back, she heard his mother say to him and the other children 'don't let anyone tell you where you can or cannot go or play'.
Julie has spoken to the carpenter who erected the gate to ask if a rubber flap could be attached to the bottom of the gate to stop the children crawling under it (the gate had to have a gap at the bottom because of an uneven driveway).
She's just exasperated at this stage and is wondering what, if any, rights does one have to privacy and the peaceful enjoyment of one's own home and garden and how best to tackle the situation without causing outright war or without going to even greater lengths and expense to secure her property.
Julie lives in a small housing estate of 18 detached 4/5 bed homes with large gardens.
The problem is that Julie's next door neighbour has 4 children who treat Julie's property as their own - they climb over the fence into the back garden when my friend is home and even when she not home; they are constantly in her front garden and, as they're too small to reach the doorbell, they repeatidly kick the front door and the side glass panel to get attention.
When Julie's family are having a meal either in the kitchen (which has large windows and doors at the rear of the house) the kids next door are up on the fence shouting, throwing things into the garden and generally causing a disturbance.
Julie spoke really calmly to her neighbour when it first happened last summer and asked that the kids not climb over the fence into her garden and stand on the fence when they are quietly enjoying their deck / garden or entertaining guests and the response she received was 'it's my fence and if my children want to stand on it or climb over it, then that's fine'.
It's turned into a bit of a feud now with the two female neighbours no longer speaking to each other. Julie last week raised the height of the back garden fence on her side of the boundary to the allowed 2 meters to deter the children. She also installed a heavy wooden gate at the top of the driveway at the front of the property.
Unfortunately, the children are still climbing over the fence at the back - the youngest is 4 years old and her mother seems to think it's okay for her to climb over a 2 meter high fence - and they have discovered that they can crawl under a space at the bottom of the front gate to get access to the front garden and front door.
Julie has asked the children to get off the fence even when the mother or father of the children is in their back garden. The children refuse and the parents do nothing to intervene.
2 days ago the neighbours decided to move their dog kennel from the far side of their house to the side next to Julie's house. This very athletic dog is now climbing up on his kennel, onto the fence, onto my friend's shed roof and is jumping down into her garden, is 'doing his business' all over the place and is terrorising the cat.
My friend asked the neighbour's son to come and get the dog 4 times in one day and the neighbour still hasn't done anything about the problem. The last time she asked him to take the dog back, she heard his mother say to him and the other children 'don't let anyone tell you where you can or cannot go or play'.
Julie has spoken to the carpenter who erected the gate to ask if a rubber flap could be attached to the bottom of the gate to stop the children crawling under it (the gate had to have a gap at the bottom because of an uneven driveway).
She's just exasperated at this stage and is wondering what, if any, rights does one have to privacy and the peaceful enjoyment of one's own home and garden and how best to tackle the situation without causing outright war or without going to even greater lengths and expense to secure her property.