South Lanarkshire Council

Summary
Mr C complained that he and his wife (Mrs C) had experienced antisocial behaviour from their neighbours for a number of years. This included dog barking and noise. They were unhappy that the council had not taken action against these neighbours. Mr and Mrs C were also unhappy about a warning letter that the council sent to them about their own behaviour in 2009. They said they had not seen this and were unaware of it until 2011. Mr C felt that it had been issued without proper investigation and in the absence of any evidence against them.

In our investigation we considered events from 2008 onwards. We considered the council's response to our detailed enquiries, and how they had dealt with Mr and Mrs C's complaint. We reviewed their investigations and examined relevant policies and procedures, including the council's antisocial behaviour policy, keeping of pets policy and complaints procedure.

Having considered all this information, we did not uphold Mr C's complaint about the council's actions or the warning letter. We found that they appropriately investigated Mr C's complaints according to their antisocial behaviour policies and took adequate action about his complaint. 
We also found that the warning letter had been correctly issued.

However, our investigation revealed that the council had not followed the relevant sections of the keeping of pets policy that related to keeping more than one pet. We, therefore, upheld this aspect of the complaint about the lack of explanation of the situation regarding the neighbours' dogs.

Recommendations
We recommended that the Council:

• ensure that Sections 2.1 and 2.2 of the keeping of pets policy are correctly followed;
• give us an update on the number of pets authorised (following the keeping of pets policy) to remain in the neighbours' property; and
• apologise to Mr C for the failures in both adhering to the keeping of pets policy and the council delay, to acknowledge Mr and Mrs C's concerns about this aspect in their initial complaint.