Difficult lockdown with neighbours.

[Showar54]

Our neighbours next door moved in five years ago. We were having our neighbours who are an older couple knock on our door and telling us that they can ‘smell drugs’ and for lots very minor reasons. we invited them both in and they looked in the house to show that there were no drugs being used. During the first lockdown the neighbours made several false reports to the police that they could smell cannabis coming through our walls and that we were smoking cannabis in front of our children. The allegations are not true. The police have visited us on three different occasions and looked around the house but have not found anything as we don’t use drugs. They have visited our neighbours and explained that there is nothing there but have been told that they are not doing enough to catch us! We were also having verbal abuse outside of the property and calling us names and ‘pot head’. They have also made reports to social services/nspcc with regards to the drugs use that is not happening.

I made a complaint of harassment in May 2020 and things calmed down.They put up a camera on their drive which also covers our driveway. We heard no more until yesterday when I had a knock on the door from two officers who said that there had been reports of drug use and growing drugs at our property and in the shed.


They spoke to me and then said they were going next door. No evidence of drugs and further false allegations.

Is there any advice on what I can do in this situation. please note that I work as a registered social work and so need to be careful around allegations as this could affect my registration and livelihood.

[ostell]

Ask them to move the camera so that it does not cover your private property.

[Aged William]

How was your harassment complaint resolved, if at all?

[islandgirl]

You probably need to go and have a chat with the Police about harassment. It would be interesting to know the answer to the above question. Clearly when the Police intervened previously things "calmed down" but perhaps a threat of being charged with an offence would make this stop permanently. The most important thing is to keep a log of everything that happens.

[Showar54]

Thank you for the above posts. As far as I know it was not really resolved as such but when the police spoke to my neighbour and the neighbour on our other side (who supported what we were saying) but not really clear there was an outcome as such. This was the point when the camera went up! We have not discussed the camera with the neighbour as we thought that would lead to lots of phone calls to the police and social services. We live in terraced properties and we have a shared drive unfortunately.....