This article was originally published on wiglaw.co.uk

Is the UK government guilty of a systemic failure to implement the statutory nuisance regime?

A communication made by Mr Ball to the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee makes this assertion (2025/218) and its admissibility will be discussed on 24 February. These are my personal views.

Mr Ball lives in the middle of a village where there is a historic motor racing circuit. The circumstances are redolent of the football stadium noise posited by Lord Carnwath in Lawrence v. Fen Tigers Ltd [2014] AC 822 (the locality principle applies).

Mr Ball complains that, first, judicial and quasi-judicial complaints over the years have failed him, and secondly, the Secretary of State has been wrong not to take over the powers and duties of the local council available under Schedule 3, para.4 (default powers).

Mr Ball succeeded in a complaint to the Ombudsman in March 2014. The Council accepted the recommendations and served a new abatement notice. He then succeeded in an appeal to the First Tier Tribunal in 2024, which decided that the Information Commissioner was wrong to have allowed the Council to have withheld data. He then succeeded in an appeal to the Court of Appeal in 2024 which decided that the first instance judge was wrong not to have held that an abatement notice could not include a power of variatin.

Mr Ball states: “In summary, after over 13 years of attempting to resolve matters through a range of legal routes, the Communicant and many other local residents in the local community continue to suffer unacceptable noise pollution from the Motor Racing Circuit.”

So far as the modest number of proceedings is concerned, it would seem that the Courts and Tribunals have supported Mr Ball, rather than frustrated his attempts to limit noise emissions. In this respect, the communication does not support a systemic failure to implement Part III, EPA 1990. He has alternative means for securing noise levels which would be “acceptable” to him personally.

As to the complaint that the Secretary of State has not exercised her default powers, those powers will be discussed in a post tomorrow.