Neighbour disputes in Singapore run on a three-step track: talk it out, then community mediation, then the Community Disputes Resolution Tribunals at the State Courts if neither works. The CDRT hears one thing only, a claim under the Community Disputes Resolution Act 2015 for unreasonable interference with your enjoyment or use of your home.
I’m Roy. I’m an Associate Director at A.W. Law LLC and I run civil disputes in the State Courts. Neighbour matters are the ones where people arrive angriest and where the law gives the least dramatic answer, so it is worth knowing what the tribunal can and cannot do before you spend a year on it.
What the law actually covers
Section 4 of the Community Disputes Resolution Act 2015 says a resident must not, by act or omission, directly or indirectly, and whether intentionally, recklessly or negligently, cause unreasonable interference with a neighbour’s enjoyment or use of the place they live in.
Two limits are built into that sentence, and both catch people out.
Who counts as a neighbour. Someone who lawfully lives in the same building as you, or within 100 metres of you. It does not include a person living in the same flat. Housemates, family in the same unit, and a landlord who does not live there are outside the CDRT entirely. If your problem is with the person you rent from, that is a tenancy matter, and our guide to tenant rights in Singapore is the better starting point.
What counts as unreasonable. Section 5(2) tells the tribunal to weigh the impact of any order on the neighbour and everyone living with them, and to weigh “the ordinary instances of daily living that can be expected to be tolerated by reasonable persons living in Singapore”. Most people who come to me with a noise complaint are describing normal life in an HDB block at a volume they have stopped being able to ignore. Children running at 8pm is daily living. Renovation drilling at 2am is not.
Noise, smoke, hoarding and pets
The Act gives its own list of what interference looks like:
- Excessive noise, smell, smoke, light or vibration.
- Littering at or near your home.
- Obstructing your home by placing objects at or near it.
- Interfering with you or your movable property near your home.
- Surveillance of you or your home, done at or near it.
- Trespassing on your home.
- Letting an animal trespass, make excessive noise or smell, or foul the area near your home.
Noise dominates. In an answer to Parliament on community disputes, the Ministry of Law put excessive noise at roughly 65% of CDRT cases, ahead of excessive vibration and littering.
Smoking splits into two questions. Smoking inside a neighbour’s own flat is not an offence, though drifting smoke can still be “excessive smoke or smell” for a section 4 claim. Smoking in the common corridor, stairwell or lift of an HDB block is prohibited, and the National Environment Agency enforces that. Report the second, claim on the first.
Hoarding got its own provision in 2025. Section 11A now lets the tribunal authorise a community relations officer to enter a flat and remove and dispose of hoarded material, but only where a specific performance order was already made and its terms were not met. It sits at the end of the road, after softer orders have failed.
Start with mediation at the CMC
The Community Mediation Centre, under the Ministry of Law, mediates neighbour disputes at no cost. A session runs about 2 to 4 hours, weekdays or Saturday mornings, and a signed settlement agreement binds the people who sign it.
Attendance used to be purely voluntary, and that was the weak point. Ministry of Law figures given to Parliament show roughly 1,300 neighbour disputes registered for voluntary mediation between November 2024 and August 2025, with about half going nowhere because the other side never responded and another fifth declining outright.
Two things have changed that. Authorised officers can now issue a mediation direction requiring both sides to attend, with or without consent, and failing to turn up is an offence carrying a fine of up to S$1,500. And since April 2025 a Community Relations Unit has been piloted in Tampines HDB estates, with officers who can investigate severe noise and hoarding cases and issue abatement orders.
Once a claim is filed, section 30 lets the registrar or a tribunal judge send the parties to mediation anyway, with or without consent, and requires them to consider whether mediation was already tried. Refusing that order is contempt of court. So mediation is not a box to tick on the way to the real remedy. If you skip it, you will usually be sent back to it, three months later and several hundred dollars poorer. Where the dispute is worth structuring properly before anyone files, mediation and arbitration is what we do on the commercial side too.
What the CDRT can order
If a section 4 claim is made out on a balance of probabilities, meaning more likely than not, section 5 lets the tribunal order damages, an injunction, specific performance, an apology in whatever form it thinks fit, and any ancillary order needed to give effect to those.
Breach triggers an escalation ladder rather than an immediate penalty:
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| Order under section 5 | Damages, injunction, specific performance or apology |
| Special direction (section 6) | A fresh direction to comply, sometimes backed by a bond |
| Exclusion order (section 9) | The neighbour is excluded from their own home |
| Breach of exclusion order (section 10) | Fine up to S$5,000, jail up to 3 months, or both, plus up to S$1,000 for each further day, capped at S$10,000 |
The ladder is real, but the top rungs are rare. Across 2020 to 2024 the Ministry of Law reported 1,031 claims filed, 233 orders made, 651 claims withdrawn or discontinued, and 26 enforcement orders, of which just two were exclusion orders. Read that spread honestly: most claims end without a tribunal order at all, and a good number of those endings are settlements.
Filing a claim at the CDRT
Claims are filed online through the Community Justice and Tribunals System. The State Courts guide to filing and serving a neighbour dispute claim sets out the steps, and the current filing fee is S$150. You serve the papers within 14 days of filing.
Three limits are worth memorising before you start:
- S$20,000. The prescribed limit on the tribunal’s jurisdiction under section 17.
- 2 years. A claim brought more than 2 years after the cause of action accrued is out.
- Section 4 only. The tribunal has jurisdiction over nothing else. Bundle in a claim it cannot hear and it must dismiss the whole action unless you withdraw that part or apply to transfer the proceedings.
Lawyers cannot appear for a party at the CDRT unless every party agrees and the tribunal grants permission. That is deliberate, and for most neighbour claims it is the right design. Where legal help earns its keep is on the paperwork before filing: the evidence log, the letter that makes the other side take it seriously, and the judgment call about whether this is a CDRT claim at all.
When it is harassment, not nuisance
The line I redraw most often is this one. The CDRT deals with interference with your home. It does not deal with what a neighbour does to you as a person.
Threats, abusive messages, publishing your details online, following you, surveillance aimed at you rather than your flat: those sit under the Protection from Harassment Act 2014 and are heard by the Protection from Harassment Court, with protection orders and expedited protection orders available. Our guide to POHA for victims walks through that process and the filing fees.
Assault, criminal intimidation, vandalism and mischief are police matters, and a report is the right first move rather than a tribunal claim. Where a neighbour has damaged a shared wall, a common area or the boundary itself, you are into property disputes rather than community disputes, and different rules apply.
What to do next
Start the log today, with dates, times, duration and what you did about each incident. Try mediation at the CMC even if you are certain it will fail, because the tribunal will ask and the record helps you either way. Then check the three limits before you file: the S$20,000 cap, the 2-year window, and whether your complaint is really a section 4 claim.
If the dispute has grown past the tribunal’s limits, or it has turned into harassment, or it involves the property line rather than the noise coming across it, the first ten minutes with us are free. Book a Property Dispute Discovery Session and we will tell you which of the three routes actually fits.
