Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to take sufficient action over noise nuisance from a barking dog. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complained about the Council’s failure to take court action against her neighbours for allowing a dog to bark most of the day. She says the Council issued warning letters but did not follow up with enforcement action.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered the information provided by the complainant and the Council’s responses.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Mrs X says the Council failed to take action against her neighbours over a barking dog which she reported in 2024. She says the Council took recordings and also sent letters to her neighbour about the complaint but she wants it to take court action to stop the nuisance.
6. The Council says it installed recording equipment in Mrs X’s home and analysed the results. It concluded that the barking was not of sufficient volume or regularity to be a statutory nuisance. It wrote to the owner advising them of the disturbance being caused but could not take further action.
7. The Environmental Protection Act 1990 places a duty on councils to investigate reports of nuisance and to take reasonable steps to investigate any complaints of statutory nuisance that it receives. The task of detecting statutory nuisances is usually delegated to Environmental Health Officers.
8. If the Council had considered the issue to be a statutory nuisance it would be required to serve an abatement notice. There is no duty to serve a notice if the Council decides there is no statutory nuisance, as in this case. These notices carry a right of appeal to the magistrates court and the resident can appeal if they believe the notice was unreasonable or incorrectly served. This means the Council would have to have a case which could be reasonably defended at appeal and if there is not sufficient evidence it should not serve a notice.

The Ombudsman is not an appeal body. This means we do not take a second look at a decision to decide if it was wrong. Instead, we look at the processes an organisation followed to make its decision. If we consider it followed those processes correctly, we cannot question whether the decision was right or wrong, regardless of whether someone disagrees with the decision the organisation made.

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Final decision

9. We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to take sufficient action over noise nuisance from a barking dog. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman