Decision report 201104276

Summary

Mrs C complained about the way the council investigated complaints of antisocial behaviour made against her and her family, and also about the way the council investigated complaints that she and her family made about their neighbours. We did not uphold Mrs C's complaint that the council had unreasonably instructed her neighbours to make complaints against her family, as we found that the council followed their own procedures by issuing incident diaries to neighbours who had made complaints. We also did not find any evidence that the council had encouraged complaint making in the way Mrs C alleged.

We did uphold the complaint that the council unreasonably issued letters about starting antisocial behaviour investigations into Mrs C and her adult children. We found that the council had not done this within in a reasonable time frame, considering the date the last complaint was made and the date the letters were issued. We did not, however, uphold the complaint that that the council had failed to investigate complaints of antisocial behaviour made by Mrs C and her family. We found evidence that the council recorded these, carried out investigations, and wrote to Mrs C and her husband explaining the results of the investigations.

Recommendations

We recommended that the council:

• apologise to Mrs C and her children for sending letters about an antisocial behaviour investigation at the stage that they did.