Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the way the Council dealt with reports of breaches of working hours and noise. There is not enough evidence of fault in the way the Council considered the reports to justify an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complains the Council has failed to find a developer in breach of the limits on working hours.
2. She says this has impacted her enjoyment of her home. Mrs X wants the Council to remove the policies which she says it does not enforce. She also wants the Council to install vibration monitoring on request.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by Mrs X and the Council.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. The Council has a policy that restricts noisy work carried out by professional contractors on construction and demolition sites. Noisy work is restricted to:

• Monday to Friday: 8am to 6pm

• Saturday: 8am to 1pm

• Sunday: No noisy work

• Public Holidays: No noisy work

7. Mrs X complained to the Council that developers were working outside of working hours causing noise and vibration on the building site next to her home. She completed diary sheets and provided video footage.
8. The Council says officers visited the site before 8am more than once and observed activity on the site. However, the officer’s opinion was that the noise was not likely to cause disturbance beyond the site boundary.
9. It also confirms it conducted formal noise monitoring and found no statutory noise nuisance on the site. Despite this, officers engaged with the site manager, reminding them of the policy of restricted hours for noisy work.
10. The Council ensured vibration monitoring was carried out on the site while piling took place.
11. I appreciate Mrs X says her amenity is significantly impacted by the work on site being undertaken outside the restricted hours for noisy work. But the Ombudsman is not an appeal body. This means we do not overrule Council decisions or tell it how it should operate its services. Rather, we look at whether there was fault in the way it makes its decisions. If we decide there was no fault in how it did so, we cannot question whether it should have reached a particular decision or say it should have reached a different outcome.

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Final decision

12. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint. There is not enough evidence of fault in the way the Council has handled her reports of work undertaken outside restricted hours and noise nuisance allegations to justify starting an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman