Investigating your air quality or pollution complaint

How we investigate

Our officers will use different methods to investigate a report and may ask for your cooperation. This may include a prearranged visit to your home.

Some complaints are complex and require us to work with our colleagues and partners to investigate, such as planning enforcement.

We will provide a fast response to complaints that are likely to affect lots of residents or cause significant disturbance. Long-running and complex complaints will be allocated a dedicated officer to investigate.

We ask that you work with our officers to support an investigation until the complaint is resolved or we are satisfied the problem is not occurring.

What we will do about an air quality or pollution problem

If an officer investigates the problem and determines that a ‘statutory nuisance’ is happening, has happened or will happen in the future, they may serve an abatement notice on the person responsible for the issue.

For a problem to be considered a statutory nuisance, it must do either or both of the following:

• unreasonably and substantially interfere with the use or enjoyment of a home or other premises
• injure health or be likely to injure health

A notice may also be served on the person responsible for the location where the problem is coming from. The notice will require the nuisance to be stopped within a specific period of time. Not following a notice is a criminal offence and could result in legal action, like being taken to court.

You can read more about what counts as a statutory nuisance and how councils deal with complaints.