Ombudsman tells council to pay £3k over delayed abatement notice
North Hertfordshire Council wrongly delayed serving an abatement notice on a noisy business, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has found.
The Ombudsman has told the council to pay £3,000 to the complainant, who lived next door to the business, in recognition of the loss of residential amenity that she suffered.
In December 2021, the complainant contacted the council to say she was suffering from noise nuisance caused by business.
She cited the loading and unloading of vehicles and a fume extraction system as the two main sources of noise.
The council then began monitoring the businesses' noise pollution, both through the neighbour's own recordings and through its own noise monitoring equipment and by visiting the site.
It monitored the noise for two years, during which time the council asked the site manager to mitigate the noise, which produced some short-term improvement, but the neighbour still complained regularly about intrusive noise.
The neighbour made a formal complaint to the council about its lack of progress to resolve the situation.
The council acknowledged the situation had gone on for too long and that informal measures had not worked.
It apologised for not serving an abatement notice sooner, but that it had since done so.
The neighbour then complained to the Ombudsman that the council had not thought to acknowledge the stress, anxiety, time, and trouble she had been put to over the previous years.
After investigating, the Ombudsman found that, on balance, had the council acted more swiftly to serve a formal abatement notice, it was likely the business would have put measures in place to reduce noise sooner.
As a result of its findings, the council has agreed to pay the neighbour £3,000 to recognise the impact on her quality of life and inability to enjoy her own home the delay caused.
The council has also agreed to circulate guidance to staff, reminding them of their duties.
Amerdeep Somal, Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, said: "The law is clear that, where a council believes there to be a statutory nuisance, it needs to act by serving an abatement notice and can only delay serving such a notice by seven days.
"In this case, the council tried for two years to resolve the matter by informal action without first deciding whether the noise the neighbour experienced amounted to a statutory nuisance. This left the neighbour suffering from the impact of the noise from the nearby business for far too long and was avoidable had the council acted swiftly."
Cllr Dave Winstanley, North Hertfordshire Council’s Executive Member for Housing & Environmental Health, said: “We accept the findings of the LGO and have agreed to pay the recommended compensation of £3,000. We apologise to the complainant and have adjusted our procedures following this case.”
Adam Carey
