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Leicester City Council (202443155)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202443155

Leicester City Council

14 August 2025

 

Our approach

What we can and cannot consider is called the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction and is governed by the Housing Ombudsman Scheme. The Ombudsman must determine whether a complaint comes within their jurisdiction. The Ombudsman seeks to resolve disputes wherever possible but cannot investigate complaints that fall outside of this.

In deciding whether a complaint falls within their jurisdiction, the Ombudsman will carefully consider all the evidence provided by the parties and the circumstances of the case.

The complaint

  1. The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of noise nuisance.

Determination (jurisdictional decision)

  1. When a complaint is brought to the Ombudsman, we must consider all the circumstances of the case as there are sometimes reasons why a complaint will not be investigated.
  2. After carefully considering all the evidence, I have determined that the complaint, as set out above, is not within the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. The reasons for this are set out below.

Summary of events

  1. The resident is a secure tenant of the landlord. The landlord is a local authority. The property is a 3-bedroom terraced house.
  2. The resident requested an investigation into a noise complaint on 22 May 2024. The landlord gave her the details of the Noise and Pollution Control Team (NPC team) so that she could report the noise to them.
  3. The resident reported noise coming from her neighbour’s property to the NPC team. The NPC team installed a noise monitoring recorder in the resident’s property between 19 November 2024 and 27 November 2024. The NPC team wrote to the resident on 29 November 2024. They said that they had not witnessed a statutory noise nuisance in the recordings. The NPC team raised the possibility of the resident have the medical condition tinnitus and said they would not be reinstalling the equipment.
  4. The resident made a formal complaint on 6 December 2024. She was unhappy with the NPC’s investigation and that they had raised the possibility of her having tinnitus.
  5. The local authority’s corporate complaints team provided a stage 1 response on 19 December 2024, and a stage 2 response on 22 January 2025. In summary, they said:
    1. The NPC team can only take action on noise that is a statutory nuisance. They stood by their assessment of the noise levels being too low to be a statutory nuisance, which limited the actions the NPC team could take.
    2. The resident could report the issues to the NPC team again if there was a significant increase in the noise levels or new instances of a disturbance.
    3. They were following their own procedures when they raised that tinnitus could be the reason for the noise. They apologised for any offence caused by this suggestion.
    4. If the resident was unhappy with its response, then she could refer the issue to the Housing Ombudsman Service.
  6. The resident referred her complaint to us on 27 January 2025 as she was unhappy with the way the matter had been handled. She has said she wants the noise to be stopped and an apology for saying that she has an issue with her hearing.

Reasons

  1. Paragraph 41(d) of the Scheme states: “The Ombudsman cannot consider complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion concern matters in respect of Local Housing Authorities in England which do not relate to their provision or management of social housing, or the management of dwelling which they own and let on a long lease”.
  2. The NPC Team are not part of the landlord’s functions that are described in the above paragraph. They are a part of the wider functions of the local authority that deals with statutory noise nuisance and environmental health. This is a separate part of the local authority which does not relate to the provision of social housing or the management of a property. Because of this, the complaint is outside of the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction, and we cannot consider it.
  3. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) have jurisdiction to consider complaints about the wider functions of local authorities. The resident has the option to refer this complaint to the LGSCO to consider.
  4. We note that the resident was referred to the Housing Ombudsman by the team who handled her complaint. The LGSCO may be able to consider the appropriateness of this advice in the context of any investigation into the local authority’s complaints handling.