Residents on a smart suburban housing estate say their lives are being blighted by ‘nuisance neighbours’ who have turned their home into a graveyard for cars.
Abandoned cars and unsightly piles of rubbish have been piled up at the house and left to rot.
Trees and bushes have been left to grow wild leaving turning the property into a ‘blot on the landscape.’
David and Gail Delivett say the once-smart bungalow in Seaford, East Sussex has been abandoned for over a decade.
On the driveway there are seven rusting cars, including a Rover 2000 and Mini Cooper, and the place now looks like a ’scrapyard.’
Residents have urged the council to take action against the owners who live in a flat down the road.
David, 71, a retired NHS worker, said: ‘We moved in 15 years ago and the bungalow was quite neat but then the owners left and began abandoning their old cars there.
‘Rubbish also began to pile out outside the property and the council had to take action to demand they clear it.
‘There is a huge sycamore tree that hangs over our property and we have to cut it back to prevent branches blocking out light.’
He added: ‘Their garden is like a jungle. The whole place looks unkempt and dirty. It’s a real shame.
‘Being part of a community means respecting the area and the couple that own the property certainly don’t do that.
‘It makes me angry. People all stop and look at it. It will devalue our property.’
Gail Delivett said: ‘We moved into our house in 2009 and they moved out a couple of years after that. They occasionally come back to the property but in reality they live elsewhere.
‘We have had to report the unsafe trees – which had died – at the back and the council came round and took them down but it’s just one thing after another. There is quite a collection of old cars just rusting away on the drive.’
Another resident, who did not wish to be named, said: ‘When you drive down the road you see all these cars just rotting away – it’s completely incongruous; you don’t expect to see something like that, especially on a smart close like this one.
‘However I doubt they’re doing anything wrong. The council can only take action if a homeowner is doing something which contravenes the law.
‘You can’t impel someone to keep their homes looking a certain way and if they want to be scruffy then they have every right to do so.’
Another said: ‘What I don’t understand is why they don’t sell the property. They don’t live here. Why don’t they just sell the house instead of letting fall into wrack and ruin.’
In reply to an online discussion on the issue, one commentator said: ‘The NIMBY generation believe that they have the right to control what other people do with their land.
‘Their sense of entitlement extends well beyond their own property line into adjacent properties, streets and public highways.’
When approached by , the owner said he had been in a series of disputes with his neighbours over the past 10 years.
The man, who wished to remain anonymous, had disagreed with them over property boundaries, the cars and mature trees in his garden.
He said: ‘It’s my business what I do with my house, it’s nothing to do with them so they should keep their noses out of it really.’
He added that due to health reasons he hadn’t been able to do some planned work on his property.
A spokesperson for Lewes District Council said: ‘Our planning enforcement officers have considered the amenity impacts of this site and the merits of formal enforcement action.
‘We continue to monitor the condition of the site and are keeping formal action under review.’