Decision Report 201911282

Summary

C's complaints related to a council-run football pitch next to their home. C reported that the noise levels from the pitch, as well as foul language by the users of the pitch were reaching unreasonable levels, particularly later in the evening before the pitch closed at 10pm, and that this was keeping their young child awake. They explained that they had provided recordings to the council to evidence this, but that the council had refused to take action to address it.

We found that the council had, in response to C's concerns, amended their letting terms and conditions to ensure that there were clear rules prohibiting unreasonable noise levels and language by renters of the pitch. However, the only steps that the council had taken to address this with users, was to send a general email about unreasonable noise to all renters of pitches they ran, warning that leases may be removed if terms and conditions were breached by unreasonable behaviour.

Given that C had been providing clear reports and recordings of specific times and behaviours, we considered it was unreasonable for the council not to take any steps to raise these issues with the specific users responsible. We also considered that the council had failed to provide sufficient explanations to C of the kind of evidence that they would consider and how they would investigate their concerns.

For these reasons, we upheld C's complaint.

Recommendations

What we asked the organisation to do in this case:

• Explain to C what they need to do to report and evidence unreasonable use of the pitches going forward.

What we said should change to put things right in future:

• When receiving evidence of misuse of council facilities, the council should take appropriate action to ensure the users responsible abide by the letting terms and conditions.

We have asked the organisation to provide us with evidence that they have implemented the recommendations we have made on this case by the deadline we set.