North Herts Council has been ordered to pay a resident £3,000 after an Ombudsman found the authority had not done enough to stop noise issues from a nearby business.

The resident, known as Miss F, complained to the council in December 2021 about noise from the business's loading and unloading vehicles and from an extraction system.

She said the loud noises led to her being woken between 4am and 5am most days, and meant she was "unable to open windows in her home for long periods".

The council began investigating the allegations, but by September 2023 – almost two years after the initial complaint – no formal action had yet been taken, and Miss F submitted a formal complaint.

At the time, North Herts Council recognised it had taken them "far too long" to deal with the issue and explained they had had "problems with staff shortages and turnover".

It also served a noise abatement notice on the business and apologised to Miss F for not doing it "much sooner."

Miss F then escalated her complaint, arguing that she should be given compensation "for the stress, anxiety and time" she had spent on the issue. The council said they could not offer compensation as Miss F had not raised it in her initial complaint.

The Local Government Ombudsman, however, described the council's response as "somewhat curious" and ordered it to pay Miss F £300 per month for ten months.

It said Miss F had suffered a "significant injustice" and added: "An apology is not an adequate remedy for this."

Since the notice was served, the business has taken steps to reduce noise, so the Ombudsman concluded that "this would have happened sooner if the council had not delayed serving the notice."

The Ombudsman said the council had made a "critical fault" by not immediately deciding whether there was a statutory noise nuisance; if there had been, it should have served a noise abatement notice immediately.

They concluded that it should not have taken North Herts Council 22 months to issue a notice – a decision that, it said, "appears mostly to have been made based on a single site visit".

Cllr Dave Winstanley, North Herts Council's executive member for housing and environmental health, said: "We accept the findings of the Local Government Ombudsman and have agreed to pay the recommended compensation of £3,000.

"We apologise to the complainant and have adjusted our procedures following this case."