Council rap as woman’s health hit by noisy gym

WATCHDOGS have ordered South Gloucestershire Council to apologise to a woman who suffered mental health problems due to a noisy gym beneath her flat because of a planning blunder.

The Local Government Ombudsman upheld her complaint and ruled the authority failed to properly consider the potential impact of noise and vibration on neighbouring homes when it approved the fitness centre’s planning application.

It has told the council to pay her £200 compensation, investigate whether the levels of disturbance amount to a “statutory nuisance”, which could lead to an abatement notice, and produce an acoustic report to come up with a way of reducing the problems for residents.

The council says it accepts the findings and that it had followed procedures in place at the time but had “acted quickly” to amend them when the issue was raised.

The woman, Miss C, complained that the local authority failed to properly consider the planning application and that she suffers “unacceptable levels of noise and vibration from music, shouting, dropping weights and other noises which are harming her mental health”.

South Gloucestershire Council had previously granted permission for a smaller gym at a former shop beneath apartments in a local neighbourhood centre but a new application sought to increase its size by more than half and added a mezzanine floor.

The ombudsman’s ruling, which does not name the complainant or the location, said the planning case officer’s report did not include an assessment of the impact of the size and scale of the larger gym.

It said: “This would increase both the number of customers and the potential for noise within the unit. The gym’s mezzanine floor would also act to bring some of that noise closer to the unit’s neighbours who live above.

“There is also no reference to the other potential noise sources likely to affect residents above the gym which would include music and noise from gym users including from weights being dropped or the potential nuisance from vibration issues.”

The ombudsman’s report said the council insisted the application was determined like any other application for a change of use and there was no requirement to consult its environmental protection team under its policy at the time.

But the watchdog said: “I consider a change of use from a retail unit to a gym should have triggered such consultation under the council’s existing checklist given the likelihood of introducing noise issues.”

A council spokesperson said: “We accept the findings of the ombudsman who acknowledged that we followed the procedures in place at the time of assessing the planning application.

“However, it was considered that the assessment of the application for the gym should have included consultation with the environmental protection team. We acted quickly once the issue was raised and have amended our procedures to carry out noise assessments to see if a statutory nuisance is being created, and to see what steps may be needed to abate the noise problem for nearby residents.

“We will continue to work to find a satisfactory solution.”