Council makes £1,500 payout after failure to tackle anti-social behaviour

A city council has agreed to pay a resident £1,500 after a series of errors meant she was forced to suffer anti-social behaviour from a neighbour for more than two years.

Birmingham City Council agreed to make the payout and issue an apology after an investigation by the Local Government Ombudsman.

The complainant to the LGO, Ms A, had criticised the council for:

• Giving consent to the neighbour for a mutual exchange to a property next to her home, despite having evidence of his anti-social behaviour; and
• Failing to tell the housing association, which owned the neighbour’s property, about his past behaviour.

A report by the Ombudsman found that Birmingham had failed to take court proceedings for the possession of the neighbour’s property, when he was a council tenant, after it served him with a noise abatement notice in January 2009.

The local authority had twice seized the man’s sound equipment and prosecuted him for breaching the notice.

Birmingham’s Antisocial Behaviour Unit had recommended to officers that they should send a letter to the man warning he was in breach of the tenancy and that the authority would begin possession proceedings.

However, this was never followed up and no further action was taken, the Ombudsman’s report said.

The LGO said Birmingham also failed to carry out proper background checks when it received his application for the mutual exchange of a property.

The report found that had those checks been done, the council would have discovered the man may not have been eligible for the exchange as his partner no longer lived at the property.

Ms A, who owned her own home, had to suffer loud music, late night parties and aggressive and threatening behaviour, the Ombudsman said.

After the exchange, the housing association received complaints about the man’s behaviour. It began repossession proceedings costing more than £15,000 and is now in a position to instruct bailiffs to enforce the order.

Dr Jane Martin, Local Government Ombudsman, said: “People should have the right to enjoy their homes in peace and quiet and through no fault of her own, this woman has been subjected to years of antisocial behaviour, causing her understandable distress.

“I find Birmingham City Council’s poor records management, lack of appropriate background checks and lack of action to take possession when they had the chance have been wholly responsible for this situation.”

Dr Martin added: “I am pleased to note that the council has since changed the way it records information and has reviewed its antisocial behaviour procedures.”

A Birmingham City Council spokesperson said: “Last year we offered a full apology to Ms A and other related parties for our treatment of her anti-social behaviour case. An investigation highlighted a number of issues and lessons have been learned, which will help ensure that such matters are dealt with more robustly in future."