After years of gathering evidence, making notes of incidents every day, logging hundreds of recordings, and filling out thousands of sheets, Lorraine Heayns, her husband Barry, and two other neighbours helped Wirral Council take their Eastham neighbours to court.

On December 10, Stephen and Layla McGuigan were found guilty of breaching a noise abatement notice due to their 14 barking dogs. Liverpool Magistrates Court heard the dogs were “crying,” “squealing”, “going berserk” and “barking, screeching, even screaming”.

The court fined them separately £300 for each offence, a £480 victim surcharge, and £2,000 in costs to the council, bringing the total to be paid by the couple to £7,360. Despite the court victory, Lorraine said she took no joy in it but felt they had no other choice.

Speaking for the first time since the court’s decision, the nan said she wanted to highlight the case as “I don’t think anybody should have to feel the way I felt” and praised the support from the council, singling out Eastham councillor Chris Carubia.

For years from the early hours of the morning until past 10pm at night, the noise from the McGuigans’ back garden turned what was meant to be their forever home into a hellish nightmare.

Upon learning the verdict Lorraine said: “I sat at my desk in the maxillofacial department at Arrowe Park Hospital and cried. The girls I work with said ‘Lorraine, what on earth is the matter?’ I cried and cried and cried.”

She had told no one at work. Later that evening, she added: “I thought I’d be elated but I wasn’t. I just felt relief.”

After renovating their “forever home”, Barry and Lorraine moved into their current Eastham house in 2020. She said: “We made this just how we wanted it and we were never able to enjoy it. Not to be able to come home and sit on your settee and just go ahhhh is a horrible feeling. That is how I felt. I felt like my life revolved around dogs.”

She said: “I felt trapped and to feel trapped in something that should be your home is a horrible feeling.” In a statement to the court, Lorraine said the couple’s grandchildren also feared visiting and she had to reassure them “that the dogs can’t get to them”.

She told the LDRS: “We took them in the loft to show them they are in a cage, they can’t get you. My little granddaughter, she loved dogs. Now she doesn’t.” She added: “I don’t know them personally as people so I can’t comment on them. I am terribly sorry this is what we had to do but we were left with no choice, we had no option not to do this.

“The thought of £7,000 worth of fines. I can’t imagine. I’d go mad if that was us.”

She told the LDRS they regularly went away or visited the Nag’s Head in Willaston so much they were considered locals. Lorraine does not drink but the pub trips meant they could “chill until we think we can go home”.

She said: “Even the other week, everybody in work, we all watch the Traitors. We are all on our Whatsapp Traitors group and what happened at the end of the Traitors? Bed time for the dogs. They were all going mad so I couldn’t hear the telly.

“I had to stop the telly so of course by the time I could then put the telly back on to hear it, all the Whatsapp messages were coming through telling me what had happened. It’s silly things we know that but the impact it has on your life.

“You can’t do anything. You can’t plan anything because you don’t know what the dogs are going to be doing and it’s not the dogs’ fault. I feel terribly sorry for those animals. They have got a high pitched one. It sounds like a child screaming. You just feel utter despair. Here we go again. Another day.”

Keeping a log of evidence over that time was challenging. Barry was spend evenings upstairs collating their records over the day, something Lorraine said left her feeling lonely. She said: “You just think what type of life is this? What type of life are we living? I feel like my life stopped. It was an existence.”

Around their house, photos of their daughter’s dog Harington are dotted throughout the home. Lorraine said: “I do think we are dog people but we are sensible. Harington comes in, I look after him when they go away on holiday.

“He sleeps on the bed with me, he sits on our settee, he is part of our family. I think we are dog people where they are pets, not just animals stuck in a cage in a garden.”

Following the verdict on Wednesday, the couple said things had massively improved for now though they’ve still not been able to fully relax. After years of dealing with noise, Lorraine said: “When it’s been quiet, we’ve said it’s eerie. We just sit and think “god this is weird.”