Summary: Mr B complains about the actions of the Council after he reported noise disturbance from a neighbouring property. The Ombudsman finds there was fault by the Council in this matter and in its complaint handling. That led to injustice for Mr B for which a remedy has been agreed.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mr B, complains the Council failed to take appropriate action to deal with his reports of anti-social noise from neighbours. He also complains the Council failed to keep promises made to contact him and failed to deal properly with his complaint.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
3. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered all the information provided by Mr B about his complaint. I made written enquiries of the Council and took account of the information it provided in response. I provided Mr B and the Council with a draft of this decision and considered all comments received in response.

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What I found

5. Mr B, who is an owner-occupier, contacted the Council on 20 May 2018 to report noise from a neighbouring flat occupied by tenants. He reported that the tenant was making loud banging noises, sending excessive noise and vibration through his flat. He said he had spoken to the owner who had agreed to speak to the tenant. Mr B used the Council’s online ‘Report it – noise’ form.
6. The report generated an automated acknowledgement to Mr B which said: “A Community Protection Officer will endeavour to attend as soon as possible, subject to other enforcement commitments, and speak to the alleged perpetrator. In any event a Community Protection Officer will aim to be in touch with you on their next working day". An automated email was also sent to the Community Protection Officer (CPO) for the relevant geographical area, with Mr B’s noise report.

Mr B’s further contact with the Council

7. On 22 May Mr B rang the Council. The call log evidence shows he was on the telephone for some 25 minutes. The Council’s record of the call refers to the same issue of noise from the neighbouring apartment and said Mr B believed it could relate to the construction of floor between the two properties. Mr B had spoken to the owner of the flat who thought original carpeting could be in place with little or no underlay. Mr B says he was told someone would get back to him as soon as possible. Audio recordings of such calls are normally retained for six months, and the recording of this call is no longer available. The Council says the advisor could not find Mr B’s previous noise report so raised a new one, generating a further email to community protection. The Council has explained that the system in place at this time did not require the creation of a ‘customer account’ for logging a noise report, and therefore there was no record of the first report when the advisor searched for it.
8. Mr B rang the Council again on 29 May. The call duration was some 21 minutes. The recording of this call showed that Mr B had a very long wait on hold, first to speak to an advisor and then again when the advisor sought to check if the community protection service had provided any updates. None was located and so the adviser told Mr B it could take up to 15 days for the service to respond with an update but a message would be passed on asking the relevant officer to call Mr B back. An email referral was sent to community protection.
9. Mr B rang the Council again on 5 June to chase progress. This was a shorter call. Again, the advisor checked for an update and said it would send the query on to officers and ask them to contact Mr B direct, in the next couple of days depending on when the relevant officer was on duty. An email referral was again sent to community protection.

Mr B makes a service complaint

10. By late evening on 9 June Mr B had heard nothing back for the Council and so he made a complaint. He said advisors had lied to him and he had wasted over an hour on the telephone. He wanted to be contacted within 48 hours with a full apology and a compensation offer for his wasted time and cost of his calls. He asked the Council to arrange a meeting with him to discuss the issues he was experiencing from the neighbouring flat. Mr B again used the online ‘Report it – noise’ form to make his submission, but it was clearly a service complaint. I will return later in this statement to how the Council dealt with the complaint.
11. As before, this online submission sent an automated email to the relevant CPO team. The Chief CPO says the email was then forwarded to a specific officer for actioning but they did not receive it. The reason for this is not clear, but it was fault. The Chief CPO also says the area team was unware of what to do on receipt of a service complaint. That too was fault. All Council departments should be aware of how to deal with a complaint.
12. Mr B then submitted six further noise reports online between 13 and 23 June. Each of these set out his dissatisfaction with the lack of service he had received, and each was automatically referred to the community protection team. The Council says that only those reports from 21, 22 and 23 June were received by the relevant CPO. As noted above, that was fault.
13. The noise report of 22 June was allocated to a CPO on 25 June. That officer spoke to Mr B and the neighbours that evening. The officer took the view that the sound of footsteps from people walking around their flat at normal hours would not constitute anti-social behaviour, and so he sought advice from an environment health officer (EHO) and let Mr B know he was doing this.
14. An internal email indicates that the EHO agreed no action could be taken as the neighbour was not engaging in unreasonable activity and the installation of recording equipment would not be productive. I have seen no evidence that the EHO contacted Mr B. Neither the CPO nor EHO witnessed the noise.

The Council’s role in considering noise complaints

15. Councils must look into complaints about noise that could be a statutory nuisance (covered by the Environmental Protection Act 1990). For a noise to count as a 'statutory nuisance' it must unreasonably and substantially interfere with the use or enjoyment of a home or other premises, or injure health or be likely to injure health. Generally, the statutory nuisance will need to be witnessed by the EHO who will come to an independent judgement. The process of determining what level of noise constitutes a nuisance can be quite subjective. The level of noise, its length, timing and location may be taken into consideration in deciding whether a nuisance has occurred. Neither the CPO nor EHO witnessed the noise in this case.
16. Regarding noise nuisance caused by poor sound insulation, in the past it was established law that the ordinary use of residential premises, where the noise generated was caused by normal everyday living, could not amount to nuisance. However, since 2006 through the introduction of the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) in the Housing Act 2004 all councils are required to assess potential risks to the physical and mental health and safety of occupants from exposure to noise inside a dwelling, or within its curtilage including from exposure to noise in the home caused by a lack of sufficient sound insulation. Where a HHSRS assessment identifies a category 1 hazard there is a mandatory duty to reduce it. So, the potential for a hazard under the HHSRS due to a lack of sufficient sound insulation should at least be considered by councils. In this case that did not happen, or was not documented, and that was fault.
17. Councils can decide to take informal action if the noise complained about is causing a nuisance but is not a statutory nuisance. They may for example write to the person causing the nuisance or suggest mediation. But councils should have a policy or procedure to explain what it will do. In this case the Council has said it does not have such a policy or procedure in respect of dealing with reports of noise. That is fault.

The Council’s complaint handling

18. As stated in paragraph 10 above, it is clear Mr B’s submission of 9 June was a service complaint, and irrespective of the way it was logged it should have been picked up straight away as a complaint and actioned as such. That did not happen. Mr B rang to chase progress on this on 16 July 2018. The call duration was some 36 minutes. During the call Mr B had to explain again to the advisor what has happened to date. The advisor after some time traced what had been classified as a noise report, but no complaint, and eventually put the call through to the complaints department where once again Mr B had to repeat information he had already given. The complaints officer agrees to look into it and advises they will call Mr B back the following morning.
19. The Council’s complaints procedure sets out that it will aim to respond to complaints at the first stage within ten working days. In this case the Council responded on 31 July. As the complaint had in fact been made on 9 June, the delay was considerable. The delay was fault.
20. Responding to the complaint the Council set out what had happened but did not acknowledge fault. In addition, it contained inaccurate information, wrongly stating that three of Mr B’s noise complaint submissions had been made anonymously. That was fault.
21. Mr B was dissatisfied with the response he received and on 2 August he requested escalation of his complaint to the second stage of the Council’s procedure. Response at this stage should be provided within 25 working days. But the Council did not provide a substantive response until 24 December 2018. That was fault. The Council acknowledged and apologised for the delay. While the Council did not agree that advisors had lied to Mr B, it acknowledged there had been some failings in internal communications between relevant departments. The Council made some recommendations for service improvements.

Fault and injustice

22. As set out above there were various failings by the Council in this case, in its handling of the original noise report and in its handling of the subsequent complaint about that. These failings led to injustice for Mr B. The lack of a joined-up service meant that Mr B had raised expectations, for example about when he could expect to be contacted by officers. Further, as different departments did not know what was happening with his case he was caused avoidable frustration and a loss of faith in the information he was given or that matters were being properly progressed within the Council, and he had to keep recounting what had happened each time he called. He was put to avoidable time and trouble seeking to progress his complaint.
23. The Council has already taken some action to address failings highlighted by Mr B’s complaint, as follows:

• It is now mandatory for customers to create an account to log a ‘Report It – Noise’ case;
• Contact centre staff can now access back office systems to assist them in finding any reports not logged against a customer account; and
• Amendments have been made to the way in which cases are identified for the area teams, to remove any delay in allocating the work, and use of a team email address will remove the issue of failings in contacting an individual officer.

24. In addition, the community protection department is working on automating the allocation of service requests directly to CPOs, bypassing the need for the work to be allocated by a Senior CPO and avoiding any associated delay.
25. A recommendation has also been made that the community protection department cascade information about how to deal with customer complaints to all staff.

Agreed action

26. In addition to the actions set out above, I recommended that within four weeks of the date of the decision on this complaint, the Council:

• Issues Mr B with a full apology for the failings identified in this case; and
• Pays him £200.

27. I also recommended that within three months of the date of the decision on this complaint the Council prepares and adopts a written procedure for dealing with complaints of noise nuisance.
28. The Council has agreed to my recommendations.

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Final decision

29. I have completed my investigation on the basis set out above.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman