The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s response to his complaint about noise nuisance. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.
The complaint
Mr X complained about the Council’s failure to take action over noise caused by builders attending a roof repair on a bank holiday. He says the Council officers failed to do their job and raised their voices when he remonstrated with them.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
The Ombudsman investigates 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 may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide: there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A (6))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Mr X says he was disturbed when contractors erected scaffolding to carry out a roof repair during the morning of a bank holiday. He called the Council but its officers told him that they could not attend that day because they had other calls to visit. The officers attended the following morning but the work had been completed and the builders were no longer on site. Mr X told them it was because he had told them to leave.
Mr X says the officers raised their voices to him and the Council says this was because he approached them shouting in an aggressive and confrontational manor. We will not consider this further because it is a matter of one party’s word against the others.
The Council traced the builders and served a notice under s.60 of the Control of Pollution Act 1974 which requires them to specify the working hours they will keep on a specific site. It did not consider there was a statutory nuisance to abate because there were no contractors on site and it would require evidence of sufficient duration and frequency of the noise for any enforcement. A single unwitnessed event would not be sufficient evidence for a statutory nuisance.
When considering complaints, we may not question the merits of the decision the Council has made or offer any opinion on whether or not we agree with the judgment of the Councils’ officers or members. This means we will not intervene in disagreements about the merits of decisions.
Final decision
We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s response to his complaint about noise nuisance. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman