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The Role Of Mediation In Tackling Neighbour Disputes And Anti-Social Behaviour
8. ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH AND POLICE ACTION
8.1 The Environmental Health service involved with this research deals with around 250 neighbour noise complaints per year, but serves only a few notices. Setting noise levels stops most disputes, or at least solves them for a few months. Under the terms of a protocol, the housing investigation team take cases where one or more parties is a Council tenant. Complaints are common in properties with poor sound insulation, and an increasing number involve private rented property. The main cost is staff time. Two officers will visit if corroboration is sought, or it is an evening visit. As shown in Table 19 below, the cost of typical domestic noise cases varies depending on whether or not a court hearing occurs, but costs to environmental health services are higher than mediation services but well below the majority of cases that go to legal action. The more serious cases are likely to be taken on by anti-social investigation teams rather than confined to environmental health action.
Table 19: Costs of environmental health action
Case | Problem | Tenure | Outcome | Other services | EH cost |
1 | loud music | 2 owner occupiers | warning given, no further complaints | police | 140 |
2 | loud music | private tenant, council tenant | statutory notice, breached, appealed (dismissed); continued complaints; under housing investigation | police, housing, hsg investigation, solicitors | 300 |
3 | TV noise, doors | 2 owner occupiers | one party moved | none | 160 |
8.2 In the present study, one police force was able to provide time estimates for involvement in particular ASBO cases, and these are included in the total case cost calculations (see appendix). A second force was able to provide time estimates that cannot be linked to particular cases. Taken alone, however, these give an indication of police time involved in anti-social behaviour-related neighbour disputes ( Table 20).
Table 20: Hours spent by police on anti-social cases
hours | 5-10 | 10-20 | 20-40 | 50-60 |
no. cases | 2 | 5 | 2 | 1 |
8.3 Including call outs and preparation of custody and prosecution reports, the time spent by police on 10 cases ranged from nine hours to over 56 hours, with an average of 21 hours. This equates to an average net cost of approximately 420 in police time per case, excluding travel and all overheads, the net cost rising to over 1,100 for more serious cases.
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