Bunglers Alarmed (Part 1)

Tuesday, January 27, 2009 10:43 | Filed in Life, Local Interest, Public Sector

Environmental Protection Act 1990

I am writing to you as I have received a complaint regarding an audible intruder alarm that sounds intermmittently at your home.

The above legislation can allow the property to be entered by warrant and the alarm disabled should it be found that a statutory nuisance exists. I would ask you either to disable the alarm or remedy any faults prior to the alarm being used at the earliest possible opportunity

Letter from Gateshead Council, dated 22nd January 2009

It’s fair to say I was a little surprised by receiving this letter. Primarily because I know that our burglar alarm isn’t causing a problem. It’s a little surprising therefore that the letter starts with the assumption of fault: I’m asked to rectify a problem that I don’t believe actually exists, despite not being given any evidence whatsoever — times, dates etc of when the alarm is alleged to have caused a nuisance.

I’m also a little disappointed that if someone has felt our burglar alarm to be causing a nuisance that they haven’t actually considered mentioning it to us first, but not then again, not everyone is that friendly.

What I guess I’m probably most surprised about however, is the fact that someone has complained in the first place. I can only presume that they have either been mistaken about it being from our property, or it being a false claim made with malicious intent.

As I explained by way of reply…

I must confess to being somewhat surprised that someone has complained about the noise of our intruder alarm, for several reasons.

  • Firstly, I work mostly from home, so on average I am in the house about 12 days every fortnight, so the alarm obviously isn’t set at these times.
  • Secondly, because — with one exception — I can’t remember the last time the alarm has gone off (even once the automatic cutout has switched off the siren, the alarm still needs to be reset, and I’ve not needed to do this).
  • Thirdly, because the exception — the last time I remember the alarm going off — was this last week when I had forgotten to switch the alarm off before entering the premises. However, on realising I’d set the alarm off, I quickly unset it — and the alarm would have sounded for at most ten seconds. Not ideal I know, but hardly a noise nuisance!
  • Finally, our alarm has an automatic cut-out that prevents it sounding for more than twenty minutes, so even if it did go off in future, it would not sound continually.

Email from me in response

I went on to advise that the Environmental Health chappie was welcome to turn up at any time to see for himself; that if he didn’t believe me about the cut-out working, he was welcome to arrange for us to test it (although I’d want that in writing, so I didn’t get complaints about that), and I gave him my mobile number so he could ring at any point if there was a complaint.

Because I was so sure that it is mistaken identity — it seemed reasonable to give the benefit of the doubt — I am quite happy to be phoned up. However, if it turns out I am being phoned up for no good reason, I asked him to investigate whether, should complaints be made which turn out to be groundless, I am able to take action against a malicious complainant.

Now, given the date of the letter, I’m more inclined to believe that it was a genuine mistake than anything malicious, because the date of the letter was January 22nd (thursday), which would suggest to me that the complaint was made earlier that week.

Earlier in that week, coincidentally enough, was the power cut I mentioned in not my kind of morning. The power cut which, although I didn’t mention it in the blog post (as I thought it an expected thing to happen in a power cut), seemed to set off a lot of burglar alarms in the vicinity, although not ours, as we’d not set it that evening.

Many of said burglar alarms were still ringing four or more hours later, when I set off to catch the train. I can quite understand that if someone has had to listen to a burglar alarm going off for four hours in the middle of the night that it would upset them, but — and this is quite a critical point — it wasn’t our alarm.

While I can’t categorically prove that, I can offer some evidence that is suggestive that I was at home and awake at the time, and that therefore, presumably, I wouldn’t have sat around the house with the burglar alarm going off.

Firstly was the fact that I blogged about it the following day. Secondly, and possibly even more suggestive was that the call records on my mobile phone demonstrate that I made a telephone call to 0800 668 877 at 2:50am on the 19th of January, which, if you check the numbers to phone in the event of a power cut, turns out to be the number for power cuts in North East england.

So, on the assumption that the complaint was made about the early hours of Monday 19th (which is the only one I can reasonably suppose which would not involve malicious intent, as if someone couldn’t be bothered to get up in the middle of the night and check properly, I would be prepared to believe that they could mis-identify the house — although on the other hand if they couldn’t be bothered to check properly I think they have a damn cheek making accusations!), I can demonstrate that I was up, and that I was aware of the power cut.

Now I can’t demonstrate that my alarm was not going off, but the fact that I was up would seem to be pretty suggestive — I mean, you’d not sit in your house in the middle of the night with the burglar alarm going off for the fun of it, exactly, would you?

I therefore provided this evidence to the Environmental Health chappie, and asked that if this was the time the complaint was about, to inform the people that they have made a mistake (as I don’t want to be blamed for something that wasn’t us); or if this wasn’t it, then to provide me with some dates/times so I could work out whether or not I was in the house at the time.

I’ve also had a good read through the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (both the Act itself and on Wikipedia), and I’m obviously missing something. So far as I understand it, the Local Authority has to respond to a complaint (fair enough); if it finds evidence of a problem, it can serve an abatement notice, which you then have 21 days to appeal (again, fair enough, as I can’t imagine any evidence would be found in the first place), and failure to comply with that is an offence. I can’t find a mention of a warrant in this part of the Act, unless this is something which the magistrates court would issue…

…not that I’m wanting to be awkward, but if I am being told that a piece of legislation might be used against me for something I haven’t done, I kind of want to understand exactly what, and how, that piece of legislation applies. And I don’t see why I should get a letter unless the other party also receives a letter, saying what can happen in the event of them being found to be making a malicious complaint.

Any of my readers experts on the Environmental Protection Act 1990?

[Bunglers Alarmed Part 2 will follow, detailing the conversation I had with the Environmental Health chappie]

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23 Comments to Bunglers Alarmed (Part 1)

  1. mark fairlamb says:

    January 27th, 2009 at 10:58 am

    you could go round putting all your neighbours windows in and see who writes to the council as opposed to kicking your door in.

  2. JackP says:

    January 27th, 2009 at 11:09 am

    Well, yeeeeees, but I think technically I would be at fault then…

  3. Chris Hunt says:

    January 27th, 2009 at 1:12 pm

    I’m not clear – have you spoken to somebody on the phone about this or haven’t you? One minute you’re saying “I am quite happy to be phoned up. However, if it turns out I am being phoned up…” as if this possible phone call hasn’t happened yet; the next you’re saying “I asked him to investigate…” as though he’s already called. Oh well, all will be made clear in part 2 I suppose.

    It’s a bit worrying that nobody seems to have considered the possibility that (had its alarm really been going off) your house was being burgled at the time. I’d have thought the point of having a burgular alarm is that if it goes off, it attracts the immediate attention of the local fuzz, not a snotty letter from the council a week later.

    You do get these letters from time to time though. I got one telling me to remove a Land Rover abandoned on some waste ground near my house. As neither the car nor the ground belonged to me, I didn’t really see why I should. I ignored it and never heard any more. The car disappeared after a while – maybe the council towed it away to punish me.

  4. JackP says:

    January 27th, 2009 at 3:41 pm

    Sorry Chris for being unclear: what I was meaning was that there was more to my email contact with Environmental Health chappie than in the quote; I have also spoken to him on the phone — and that’s part two.

    Yeah, I have to also admit that the scenario of some neighbour watching our house being burgled, and as the telly is carried out, saying to their partner “look, their burglar alarm is going off again!“. But I’ll leave the subject of “neighbourliness” to part two…

    However, as the alarm hasn’t been going off (even once it has stopped sounding, it still shows us if it has gone off on the control panel), that wasn’t the case.

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