Civil & Commercial Mediation Services
Neighbour Disputes
Neighbour disputes can cause immense stress for you, your family and on your relationships with your neighbours as well as others in the community.
Compared to a commercial or workplace dispute where you can switch off and leave the dispute at work / at the office and go home and forget about it until the next day, this option does not exist if at home, is where the problem lies.
Like it or not you are going to have to live next door to your neighbours (temporarily or indefinitely), and there is no getting away from the issue(s), leaving people to feel trapped and helpless.
Although such disputes can be minor, in the extreme cases they can lead to acts of violence, assault and even bankruptcy. In recent years a number of high profile neighbour disputes have ended up in the Court of Appeal, whereby the parties in some of the cases have had to sell their houses to pay the enormous legal fees that they had racked up. Such disputes could have easily been resolved through mediation and should not have cost the parties their homes.
Mediation assists neighbours in dispute to discuss their disputes in the presence of a trained, independent mediator, without whom a conversation with one another would not be possible, preventing having to involve other parties such as the police, housing officers and so forth. Equally if they have already been involved it stops the need for a more formal process to be undertaken.
We have extensive experience of mediating between neighbours over a wide range of matters, the common ones being boundary, parking, noise, mess, DIY, racism, harassment, children, pets amongst others.
As always we can quickly get to the underlying issues and help neighbours put an end to whatever their dispute is over in one day, compared to the years in certain cases some of these disputes have gone on.
Neighbour disputes are usually mediated at the individuals homes, (rarely do they go into each others homes), it is done through private meetings, or the mediation can take place at some neutral venue such as a council office, local hotel, solicitor’s office if the parties have solicitors.
Case Studies
Neighbour Disputes Shared Drives
Neighbour disputes, Pete moved into his new home in 2009, his front drive was shared with Linda. Both of them had cars, but Lindas boyfriend would sometimes park his car on the drive, making it difficult for Pete to get his car on and off the drive, equally Linda was not always considerate with her parking. This was of particular concern to Pete when his father who was 93 came to stay; due to being elderly it was difficult to get him in and out of the car and into the house.
READ FULL CASE STUDY DOWNLOAD PDFNeighbour Disputes Noise Mess
Neighbour disputes, this dispute had been going on for nearly 3 years, originally neighbour 1 would approach neighbour 2 about the noise (loud music) and mess that kept on appearing on her front garden and neighbour 1 would always resolve both, and for a few months everything would be back to normal, every so often neighbour 2 would reoffend and neighbour 1 would have to go and have a word.
READ FULL CASE STUDY DOWNLOAD PDF