advice needed regarding environmental health issue

[ocdman]

Hi,

I have had a long running problem with a neighbour from hell who lives in squalor and is in a flat directly above me. He has some sort of mental heath problem and has smashed three windows of his flat which are broken and dangerous. The housing association have been ignoring doing anything saying that as he broke them himself he needs to repair them. Anyway to cut a long story short I contacted the environmental heath team from my local council who inspected his property from the outside and found that two windows should be repaired and wrote to my housing association telling then to repair them. This was in Feb 2016 and when I chased this up with the environmental team again in April 2016 they came back with my housing association were saying that they were unable to gain access to repair them. This has been the problem all along, my housing association refusing to force anything on this problem neighbour because of what I can only assume are the difficulties the equalities act places on landlords and such tenants .

What I would really like to know is ,because I can assume it would be pointless and a waste of time to continue with dealing with my landlord regarding this , and the environmental heath have inspected and told the association to repair, and months have passed and still no repair has been done ..... What next ? Should I ask the environmental heath to enforce this repair request ? Can they do this ?

Many thanks and advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Snoopy1948]

Re: advice needed regarding environmental health issue

Hi there ....

Very frustrating I can imagine for you ...... you say that he is 'the tenant from hell' and has mental health problems, so I am assuming that your objections and observations go beyond the smashed windows?

If this behaviour is similarly distressing other flat owners and you can get them to put this in writing, I would be addressing the HA landlord's housing officer with complaints about anti social behaviour and that would include the malicious damage to windows. Has there been any interaction with the police by this tenant to support your complaint? Do you feel that his actions are dangerous to you and other tenants?

Housing Associations seem to have 'laissez faire' attitudes nowadays and I believe a lot of that is to do with lack of finances. But it does seem to me that your long term peace ( and presumably that of others? ) would be best served by this chap being relocated or evicted through ASB.

[ocdman]

Re: advice needed regarding environmental health issue

Hi snoopy , thanks for your post. This has been going on for years , I have involved my own mental heath support ( OCD action ) because nowadays ocd is classed as a disability and I am registered disabled etc . I have involved three local councillors (over the last three years ). It has as you say involved neighbours being bothered , the police have been out many times, he has set fires in his flat, put his door in with a sledgehammer, shouts he has a gun, he is known to the police and the local mental health. He regularly confronts me aggressively . That is only a fraction of what he does and he lives in squalor etc but as I say the association just will not do anything. I have done a bit of research on the internet and I think this is because of the equalities act and it makes things really difficult for landlords because such people as this guy are in fact not responsible , so its easier and cheaper to ignore things.

But I am really suffering because of the associations lack of doing anything meaningful and am doing everything I can to fight back so as I say I involved the local environmental health but it seems that even they are being ignored by the association but I wonder if there is a way I can ask the environmental health to enforce the association to carry out the repairs that the environmental health has already told them to do ?

[Snoopy1948]

Re: advice needed regarding environmental health issue

Hi again ocdman!

You seem to paint a picture normally seen on TV's Neighbours from Hell ! It's hard to know what more you can do except create a joint complaint with every other neighbour who is affected by this, although I appreciate that you may personally find that hard to do and you may have to rope in someone who can help. If you Google this kind of situation, you will find such evictions can be eventually successful, but of course the nightmare neighbour will only move on to trouble someone else's life.