Noisy neighbours with no carpets must pay up £100,000
THE noisy neighbours of a banker must pay her £100,000 in compensation because their floors had no carpet, a judge has ruled.
Sarah and Ahmed El Kerrami were sued by Sarvenaz Fouladi, 38, who lived in a £2.6million flat on the floor below, because of the “intolerable” noise of their young family on their wooden floors.
The sound of everyday activity – from children playing to dishes being washed – ruined Miss Fouladi’s peace and kept her up at night, she said.
Miss Fouladi, who lives with her mother at the flat, said the neighbours’ children treated their flat like a “playground”, running around at all hours.
Judge Nicholas Parfitt said it was the noise of simple “day-to-day living” which had caused the problems in the mansion block in Kensington, west London, and said that the El Kerramis should have put carpets on the wooden floors in living areas.
During the case, the banker told the court she had lived happily in the Twenties-built block with 24-hour porters for several years without noise from above. It was only when work was done before the El Kerramis’ arrival in 2010 that her life and that of Fereshant Salamat, her mother, began to suffer.
Sounds from the boiler, a fridge, taps and the fireplace above began to disturb her sleep at night and relaxation during the day.
The mother and daughter kept a diary, noting down noises they objected to, including the sounds of dishes being washed, children’s voices and “angry breathing”. “They used it like a playground…, kids running and dropping things for seven hours non-stop,” she told the judge.
Miss Fouladi was accused by Gordon Wignall, her neighbours’ barrister, of being “hypersensitive” to the activity of a normal family. The sounds of the children playing upstairs were simply “ordinary domestic child noises from time to time”, he told Central London County Court.
Miss Fouladi claimed against the couple and an offshore company, described by Mr El Kerrami as a “family asset holding vehicle”, which owns the flat.
Giving judgment, Judge Parfitt rejected any suggestion that the El Kerramis had created noise deliberately to annoy Miss Fouladi and he said the noise diary kept by Miss Fouladi and her mother was “exaggerated” in places.
However, he said the noise had been a “real interference” on Miss Faloudi’s life at home, and that the lease was breached by the installation of new floors in the flat without authorisation and by the failure to use carpets in living areas.
The judge accepted Miss Fouladi’s claim that the El Kerramis and the company had caused her noise “nuisance”. He issued an injunction, ordering the company to do work on the floors in the flat to significantly reduce noise levels.
He also ordered that Miss Fouladi be paid compensation of £107,397.37, rising by £40-a-day until the work was done.
‘The children used it like a playground …running and dropping things for seven hours non-stop’