Summary: Mr K complains the Council has refused to deal with his reports of anti-social behaviour. Instead it told him to contact the police. But the police refused to consider the issue. The Ombudsman’s decision is the Council was at fault for not doing more to consider Mr K’s complaint. And for not having a ‘Community Trigger’ process, where Mr K could have asked the Council and its partners to review their response to his reports. The Council has agreed to our recommendations.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall refer to as Mr K, complains:
• the Council has not dealt with his reports of noise and anti-social behaviour (ASB) from his neighbours;
• instead it referred him to the police. But when he contacted the police, they referred him back to the Council.
2. Mr K says the ASB has caused him stress and anxiety. The problem got worse, but nobody would help him.

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What I have and have not investigated

3. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 requires all responsible bodies in an area to work together in formulating and implementing strategies to tackle local crime and disorder. This is through a community safety partnership.
4. Community safety partnerships are not a body in the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. However, our jurisdiction regarding complaints about the community safety partnership is tied to the relevant council that is a member, whose actions we can look at separately from the partnership.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

5. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. If we do find fault, 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)
6. If we are satisfied with an organisation’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

7. As part of the investigation, I have:
• considered the complaint and the documents provided by Mr K;
• made enquiries of the Council and considered its response;
• considered the law and guidance on anti-social behaviour;
• considered other organisations’ publicly available information;
• spoken to Mr K; and
• sent my draft decision to Mr K and the Council and considered the responses I received.

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What I found

Legal and administrative background

The Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014

8. The Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 defines anti-social behaviour as:
• conduct that has caused, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress to any person;
• conduct capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to a person in relation to that person’s occupation of residential premises; or
• conduct capable of causing housing related nuisance or annoyance to any person.

The Home Office’s Guidance on Anti-social behaviour principles

9. Councils have a general duty to take action to tackle ASB. The government has published a set of principles to act as a guide for bodies like councils in understanding and addressing ASB. These principles say:
• victims should be encouraged to report ASB and can expect to be taken seriously;

• agencies should have clear and transparent processes for victims to report ASB concerns and to allow them to understand how the matter will be investigated;
• agencies and practitioners should work across boundaries to identify, assess and tackle ASB .

The ASB case review (‘Community Trigger’)

10. The Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 introduced a mechanism to review the handling of complaints of ASB. This is commonly known as the ‘Community Trigger’ process. When a person requests a review, ‘relevant bodies’ (the local council, police, clinical commissioning group and social housing providers) should decide whether the local threshold has been met.
11. It is for relevant local bodies to agree their review threshold, but the ASB statutory guidance says this should be, at a maximum, that a complainant has made three reports of ASB within six months.
12. ASB statutory guidance, published by the Home Office in 2019, says:
• the Community Trigger is an important safety net in ensuring that victims' voices are heard;
• relevant bodies must publish a ASB Community Trigger procedure to ensure victims are aware they can apply to activate the procedure; and
• relevant bodies must also publish statistics showing the number of reviews which have been requested and that they have conducted.

(Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014: Anti-social behaviour powers Statutory guidance for frontline professionals)

13. The Ombudsman can only consider councils’ actions (and not the other relevant bodies) in relation to the ASB Community Trigger process.

The situation in Swindon

14. Swindon Borough Council is a unitary authority within the ceremonial county of Wiltshire. That means it is responsible for all local authority functions within the Borough. It remains within the area covered by Wiltshire Police.
15. Swindon Community Safety Partnership is an organisation involving the Council and emergency services including Wiltshire Police. Its website (which acknowledges it is out of date), has a link to a Service Charter for ASB. This notes:
• tackling ASB was a top priority for Swindon’s Community Safety Partnership;
• organisations would take a complaint about ASB seriously and investigate it thoroughly, using the full range of criminal and civil powers available;
• in information gathering, it used log sheets for complainants to record incidents.
16. Swindon Community Safety Partnership’s website has information about the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act, including the Community Trigger process.
17. The Council’s own website’s pages on ASB has instructions for the Council’s own tenants. It advises other people to call the police.
18. The Council advised me it had not yet introduced a Community Trigger process, but was looking to do so in the following 12 months. It said it had had no community trigger requests in the 12 months preceding the start of my investigation.
19. Wiltshire Police’s website has information about how to apply for a Community Trigger. It advises people who feel they may meet the threshold to contact the County Council. It has no information for residents living in Swindon.

Ombudsman’s principles of good administrative practice

20. We use our ‘Principles of good administrative practice’ guidance as a benchmark for the standards we expect when we investigate the actions of local authorities. One of our principles is titled ‘being open and accountable’. We expect council’s to be open and clear about policies and procedures and ensuring information and any advice provided is clear, accurate and complete.

What happened

21. Mr K says, since he moved home in late 2021, he has experienced problems with noise from an extended family living in a neighbouring house in multiple occupation (HMO).
22. Mr K has provided the Ombudsman with email communications he had with the Council in June 2022, about the noise. He advised the Council it had been ongoing for some time. He sent the Council some diary sheets. Its response advised:
• its Healthy Neighbourhoods Team was unable to address Mr K’s complaints under the Environmental Protection Act 1990;
• it considered the type of noise he described as possibly antisocial behaviour. But the Council no longer had an in-house antisocial behaviour team; and
• “in the first instance” he must report the matter to Wiltshire Police.
23. Mr K contacted the police. It advised it could not assist with a private noise complaint. It suggested he send his logs to the Council. Mr K says he has subsequently contacted the police and the Council about 50 times.
24. Mr K contacted the Council, complaining about the neighbours. An officer working in the Council’s Community Safety Partnership Team responded to advise Mr K:
• the owner of the property was responsible for their tenants;
• he should report the issue directly to the police as they were “police matters”.
25. Mr K complained. The Council’s response advised:
• the Council did not have an ASB team, which is why it had advised him to contact the police;
• despite what the police had told Mr K, it could not investigate ASB unless the police had first assessed it;
• it had noted the accommodation Mr K said the noise was coming from was a HMO. This type of accommodation had extra management standards. So it had asked its officer to contact the managing agents of the HMO to raise, on Mr K’s behalf, the concerns and ask what actions they were taking to resolve the tenancy behavioural issues;
• it would also engage with the housing provider.
26. Mr K escalated his complaint. The Council’s final complaint response advised it was for the landlord (not the Council) to enforce the tenant’s license agreement, if there was ASB. Its officer had liaised with it.

Was there fault by the Council?

27. My decision is the Council’s responses to Mr K’s contacts amount to fault, for the reasons set out in what follows.
28. The Council has not acted in a way that meets the provisions set out in the guidance, charters and principles described earlier my statement (see paragraphs 9-15). The Council’s actions do not:
• demonstrate it has taken Mr K’s reports seriously;
• show the Council has a “clear and transparent” process for how victims can report ASB concerns;
• show it has worked with agencies to “identify, assess and tackle” the reported ASB.
29. The Council has told Mr K to report his concerns to the police. Sometimes, in the narrow sense, and depending on the circumstances, this could be a reasonable response; for example, if there was a real and immediate threat of harm, or where the situation calls for powers the council does not have. But here, the Council has given Mr K that advice, more than once, as a general instruction. The police in turn have simply referred Mr K back to the Council. Mr K should not have had to go back and forth between different organisations. The Ombudsman can only consider the Council’s actions. But it was fault for the Council to not take ownership of the issue and coordinate a response.
30. The Council has advised it has liaised with other organisations about the issue (it has cited his neighbours’ landlord and managing agents of the property). But when I asked for its complete records of its actions, it did not send me records of those contacts. At the minimum, that suggests it has not kept accurate records of its actions after Mr K’s reports. It also suggests a lack of effective joint-working and/or information-sharing – we view such actions to be a critical feature of an effective response to ASB. As such, my decision is the Council’s actions do not meet the principles set out in our guidance on good administrative practice.

The Community Trigger

31. Government guidance requires the Council to publicise a Community Trigger protocol in a clear and accessible way. The Council says it has not introduced any Community Trigger review process. This is despite the provisions for the process being set out in 2014, and the Home Office publishing guidance since 2019. This tells relevant bodies they must not only have, but effectively publish, their Community Trigger protocol. To not have a protocol was fault.

Did the fault cause an injustice?

32. The definition of ASB found in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act is a broad and subjective definition. Whether a particular behaviour amounts to ASB will, to a large extent, rely on a council officer’s professional judgement. It is not the Ombudsman’s role to decide whether the noise Mr K is reporting amounts to ASB that any relevant body could, or should, take action about.
33. On the balance of probabilities, if the Council had a Community Trigger protocol in place, Mr K would have met the threshold for triggering the process. So he missed out on the opportunity to do this and get the Council and its partners’ response.
34. The uncertainty about whether things might have been different, if the Council had effective procedures in place, is a further injustice to Mr K. These injustices are significant enough to warrant a remedy.

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Agreed action

35. The Council has agreed to my recommendation, that, within a month of my final decision, it will:
• apologise to Mr K for the faults I have identified;
• as a symbolic recognition of the distress (such as uncertainty and stress) the faults have caused Mr K, pay him £200.
36. The Council has agreed to contact Mr K to consider how it can assist him to further present his concerns. It should have regard to what guidance and Swindon Community Safety Partnership’s Service Charter say it should be doing - perhaps, co-ordinating a response as necessary.
37. Given the Council does not currently have a mechanism for doing this, I am not being prescriptive about how it should go about this process in this instance. But I do ask it to report back to the Ombudsman with its records of what it has done to meet this agreed action.
38. The Council has also agreed with my recommendation that, within three months of my decision, it will:
• introduce a Community Trigger process, policy and procedure;
• ensure information about ASB procedures and the Community Trigger is available to the general public including on the Council’s website;
• carry out a review of its current procedures and advice to staff about how to respond to ASB complaints, to ensure the Council is acting in line with government and local guidance and processes. It may want to consider whether a specific council policy on ASB is required;
• send a reminder to its officers working in its Community Safety Partnership Team of the importance of keeping accurate and complete records.
39. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Final decision

40. I uphold the complaint. As the Council has agreed to my recommendations, I have completed my investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman