Decision Report 201203868

Summary

Ms C had complained for some time about the antisocial behaviour of her neighbours, including noise and disturbances from them and their frequent visitors, and the council's antisocial behaviour team had opened two files as a result of this. More recently, Ms C had also complained about the untidy and overgrown state of their garden, and other related matters. She told us that the council had not acted on her complaints.

We did not find that the council had unreasonably failed to deal with her complaints about the neighbour's antisocial behaviour. Our investigation found that the council had followed their policy and had issued letters of caution, but that this had not progressed to more serious warnings. We did, however, uphold her second complaint, that the council had unreasonably failed to deal with repeated complaints about the garden, as we found that the housing department had not followed their procedure on estate supervision with specific regard to untidy gardens.

Recommendations

We recommended that the council:

• apologise to Ms C for their deficiencies in securing a practical improvement in the condition of her neighbour's garden; and
• review the current condition of the garden to assess whether there is a need for formal intervention to ensure that it meets an acceptable standard.