Vehicle Nuisance

Vehicle nuisance can take many forms, for example:

Inappropriate use of vehicles on or off-road by gangs or individuals such as playing loud music from the vehicle, speeding, parking inappropriately, aggressive driving, blocking access to homes or garages, causing damage to grassed areas, riding mini-motos, carrying out repairs or running a car repair/sales business form home or a garage site, and abandoned vehicles.

It is important that the local community is protected from such activity and a number of interventions can be used:

Agreements and warnings can help those involved to understand the impact of the nuisance on their local community.
Environmental improvements can stop inappropriate use of vehicles within a residential area.
For repeated and presistent dangerous and anti-social driving, vehicle confiscation, anti-social behaviour orders, injunctions, and/or prosecution under the law are available.
Persons using the street as a car workshop and showroom can be fined under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005.

Tenancy Agreement

The Tenancy Agreement clearly identifies how tenants should not cause a vehicle nuisance to other people in the neighbourhood.

15(c) Tenants and their household are only allowed to carry out car repairs within the boundaries of the Property to the households own private registered motor cars provided that no nuisance is caused to neighbours.

16. (a) Tenants are responsible for the behaviour of everyone living in or visiting the Property. They must also keep under control any animals living in or visiting the Property. This applies when they are in the Property, in communal areas (stairs, lifts, landings, entrance halls, paved areas, shared gardens and parking areas), on adjacent land and in the locality around the Property

(b) Tenants, members of the household and visitors must not cause or permit a nuisance, annoyance or disturbance to any other person.

What should I do if someone is causing a vehicle nuisance?

STEP 1

First of all consider approaching the person causing the nusiance and find out whether they realise how it is affecting you.

Once they know how it is effecting you, they will hopefully try not to cause a nuisance.

If however, you are worried about approaching the person directly or you have approached them and they are not willing to change their behaviour then please contact us.

Follow this link to report any noise nuisance to Gloucester City Council's Environmental Health noise nuisance service|.

Follow this link to report an abandoned car to Gloucester City Councils abandoned vehicles service|

Follow this link to Gloucestershire Police|'s website to report joy riders, dangerous driving etc.

Follow this link to report the vehicle nuisance to Gloucester City Homes| e.g. inappropriate parking on grassed areas, or in residential car parks / garage areas.

You can help both Gloucester City Homes and Gloucester City Council by:

contacting us quickly about any anti-social behaviour
keeping us informed of any changes in the situation
letting us know what you think about the service we and other partner agencies give you.

STEP 2

It is essential that you keep a record of all the noise nuisance and how it is effecting you. This information could be crucial to any legal action. If neighbours are also suffering then they should also be asked to keep a record and to complain to Gloucester City Homes and Gloucester City Council's Environmental Health service.

Follow this link to download our Vehicle Nuisance incident log sheet.|

What can the City Council / Gloucester City Homes do to help?

If the person is an owner occupier then Gloucester City Council may carry out its own investigation.

If however it is a tenant, leaseholder or shared owner who are customers of Gloucester City Homes then Gloucester City Council will normally ask us to investigate the nuisance in partnership with them.

If speaking with the person concerned does not reduce the nuisance then Gloucester City Homes and Environmental Health will decide what action can be taken to stop the nuisance. This could include the following non-legal action:

Gloucester City Homes or Gloucester City Council could ask you and the person causing the noise to attend Mediation| to try and work out a solution to the problem.

Alternatively we could ask the person causing the nuisance to sign an Acceptable Behaviour Contract| which gets them to agree to reduce noise to acceptable levels and only allow such noise at reasonable times of the day.

If that doesn't work the following legal action could be taken:

If that does not work, and the issue is noise then Environmental Health will investigate and may decide to serve an Abatement Notice on the occupiers. If the noise-makers do not comply with this Notice, Environmental Health can confiscate all noise making equipment (including CD systems, radios, DVD players from within cars) and/or prosecute the noise-maker and impose a fine of up to £5000.

If that does not solve the problem Gloucester City Homes could ask the Courts for an Injunction| which forbids the person continuing the nuisance. If the injunction is broken the court could decide to jail the person(s) causing the nuisance.

Alternatively Gloucester City Homes, Gloucester City Council and Gloucestershire Police could decide to ask the courts for an Anti-social Behaviour Order| (ASBO). If the ASBO is broken the court could decide to jail the noise-maker.

Ultimately if this still fails to prevent the noise nuisance Gloucester City Homes could ask the Courts to threaten repossession| of a tenants home, or the revocation of the lease for leaseholders or shared owners, suspended if they stopped the nuisance. If they continued to cause the nuisance then Gloucester City Homes could ask the Court for repossession of the property and the person causing the nuisance would be evicted. As the person causing a nuisance had caused themselves to become homeless it is unlikely that the Council's Housing service would be required to permanently rehouse them. They are more likely to have to find their own suitable alternative accommodation.

Our service standards

We will:

contact you within five working days in non-emergency cases or within one working day in urgent cases. Emergencies should be immediately reported to the police
if necessary, arrange an interview with you within five working days in non-emergency cases or within one working day in urgent cases
discuss the situation and advise you on the options that may be available to help resolve the problem such as mediation, voluntary agreements, legal action
help you keep a detailed diary of events, which will help us gather any evidence needed to take further action
work with you to try to resolve your problem, and explain clearly what is happening at each stage
jointly work with the police and any other agency that may be able to help resolve the problem
consider legal action against any person who continues to behave in an anti-social way, including taking court injunction and possession proceedings, or an Anti-Social Behaviour Order, or supporting criminal prosecutions recommended by the police to the Crown Prosecution Service
work with the police and other agencies to protect you and any other witnesses.