A council has been told to pay a couple £20,000 compensation for noise pollution after a health inspector who visited them to investigate their complaints suffered temporary deafness.
The local government ombudsman has ruled that David Glover and his wife, Jo, endured an "utterly unacceptable" gross injustice at the hands of Torridge district council, north Devon. They had made fruitless representations about noise from a neighbouring shipyard for eight years.
When an environmental health officer finally visited the Glovers to check their complaints, he was unable to hear for 10 minutes after measuring the sound levels.
The couple, in their 50s, describe living in their semi-detached cottage next door to Appledore shipyard as a "living nightmare". They have been unable to use the back garden of their house, which runs next to a slipway used by the yard for grit-blasting and painting operations.
The ombudsman, Jerry White, says: "I have rarely seen a case where a private resident has had to endure such a degree of intrusive noise in his own home."
White has found the council guilty of maladministration causing injustice and is recommending it pay £20,000 compensation to reflect seven years of loss of amenity. He says the council should either buy the house or take urgent steps to counter the noise and dust.
During his investigation, the ombudsman found that the council had served a noise abatement notice in 1995, preventing the shipyard carrying out noisy work at weekends and on public holidays. He says action should have been taken then to investigate noise levels during the week.
Instead, the council was bent on an alternative, "flawed" course of action that involved the shipyard - one of the area's biggest employers - buying the Glovers' house and neighbouring ones with part funding from the local authority.
Six years after the noise abatement notice was served, a technical officer from the council visited the Glovers while grit-blasting was taking place. He heard a "deafening whooshing hiss" and wrote: "While making the reading, I felt uncomfortable and was concerned for my ears' health. The noise was clearly audible through the whole house and in the rear bedroom I tried cracking the rear, double-glazed window open - the noise in the room then became most unpleasantly loud."
On a second visit, the officer recorded sound levels of more than 100 decibels - louder than an express train - and experienced temporary deafness.
David Glover, who works for Devon highways department, says: "This could have been resolved a long time ago. It has been far worse for my wife than me because I'm at work all day and she is trapped in the house. She now suffers from tinnitus.
"When we bought the house in 1987, the slipway hadn't been used for 30 years. I used to go to the end of the garden and catch fish from the river." The council says the ombudsman's report will be considered by its policy and resources committee later this month, with a recommendation that compensation be paid. However, it is not certain that the council will agree to pay the full £20,000. Julian Wyatt, the council's solicitor, says: "We do not know how the ombudsman has arrived at the figures. It is open to the council to go back to him."
Draft noise abatement notices have been agreed and are due to be issued to the shipyard this week, Wyatt says.
