A Perthshire councillor has asked residents to stay patient as the number of neighbourly grievances raised with him has soared since autumn.
Carse of Gowrie councillor Angus Forbes says that the number of complaints over long-standing issues being sent to him has increased four-fold since the second string of local restrictions have been introduced.
Conservative Mr Forbes says that the gripes, which include noise complaints and dog mess, have been long standing problems which have rarely been followed up on.
He said: “Over the three and a half years I have been elected, I would expect to get around one neighbour dispute every month. Neighbour disputes are typically fallouts over overgrown hedges, noisy dogs, inappropriate parking, noisy children, littering and dog fouling.
“I always try to solve them by talking to both parties to see if there is some common ground or some sort of understanding between them that we can work with to get a suitable resolution.
“These complaints very rarely need to be escalated and in fact, most of them are really not matters for the council to get involved in.”
Mr Forbes believes that rather than the issues increasing in frequency, people are getting to their wits end and becoming more irked by long-standing nuisances.
“However, over the last few months, probably since the start of the second wave of Covid-19, I have seen a four fold increase in these types of complaints,” he added.
“This leads me to think that people really are getting fed up with lockdown and are getting stressed and angry which causes them to complain about things that would normally not bother them.
“Covid-19 has brought out the best in us but there is another side to it. The extended lockdown, people losing their jobs, businesses struggling and people worried about getting ill has caused some people to be less tolerant.
“My request to people is this, Covid-19 will end some time, eventually we will get our lives back, the vaccine is a huge step forward so please remember we are all in this together and please be tolerant.”
