POW...Zam..Wiz...Bang...Look out! The Anti-Social Behaviour Investigation Team of Oxford City Council is on the case of ‘The Council versus The Cockerel’.

Somewhere in the bowels of East Oxford there is a cockerel causing an ‘alleged noise nuisance’ under the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

A Community Response Officer of the council is up to the challenge. On January 12 he sent a letter, in fact two separate letters, one to the husband and one to the wife who live at the site of the alleged nuisance.

“I write to advise you that numerous complaints have been received about noise nuisance coming from your address sometime in October 2015. The noise is described as being from a cockerel in the form of crowing. The time that the noise takes place is during the early hours of the morning and is negatively impacting upon residents in neighbouring properties.

“Hopefully by bringing this to your attention this will be the end of the matter. However should we receive further complaints it will be investigated further and you will be contacted.”

Ouch… But he goes on in a conciliatory manner: “I am aware of the fact that because of changes in times of light and darkness during this winter, the cock crowing is perhaps not an issue at the moment, but it will be during the summer time. I however wish you to follow the advice given below and take any reasonable steps to minimise the alleged nuisance when it comes to summer time.”

The owner of the cockerel told me “I cannot find any legislation on line which tells me how loud a cock is permitted to crow. There is nothing on the Oxford City Council website about keeping chickens unless you live in a council house where only hens are permitted. The only noise rules I could find related to builders who are not allowed to work before 8 in the morning or after 5.”

“I received a visit in November from someone who described himself as a ‘Community Liaison Officer’ and said he lived in Birmingham. When I asked for an identity card he told me he didn’t have any because the council didn’t give him a card.

“He insisted I had to stop the cock crowing by training it not to make a sound before breakfast. I had to keep him in the dark till then. When I pointed out that the cockerel had seven or eight wives he told me I should keep all of them in the dark. Finally he refused to tell me who made the objection.”

The council said “It is important to ensure that your cockerel is located as far as practicable from neighbouring residential properties. This will help minimize the disturbance when your cockerel crows.”

The owner felt like she was in a catch-22 situation: “I’m surrounded by properties on all sides. They won’t tell me where the complaint was from so I didn’t know where to relocate the coop.

"I’ve asked four neighbours on all sides and my lodger if they objected to the crowing and they all said they liked it. I did some investigation and found that the complaints came from a block of flats 150 meters away, across the road and three gardens away. I’ve just been told there is another cockerel, living the other side of those flats. I wonder if it was found too? Or has only my little bantam cock been targeted?”

The advice in the council letter was fairly technical.

“It is also important that the size of the coop is controlled. The coop ceiling could be lowered to prevent the cockerel throwing back its head and crowing. You may also wish to try putting a shelf up in the hen house to allow the cockerel to walk around at normal height, but preventing it stretching its neck to make the crowing sound.”

Maybe the council wanted her to get a hydraulic hen house so she could alter the height of the ceiling each night. But certainly the Council was prepared to use every weapon in it’s armoury in this fight.

“The complainant also has the right to take their own private action through the courts to abate the alleged nuisance and we have provided them with information on how this can be done. I trust that no further complaints will be received about this matter.”

There are legal precedents on this. Recently in the village of Eyan, Derbyshire Dales District Council served an ASBO on a cockerel called William, and all this in spite of a petition launched by 28 neighbours insisting he was not a nuisance. The owner, a retired engineer Philip Sutcliffe, said “Short of chopping his head off I don’t know how I can stop William from crowing.”

There will be no court case or ASBO for the Oxford cockerel because the perpetrator of the alleged noise nuisance has been eaten. To commemorate his story, his owners have plucked his feathers and turned them into a papier-mache dodo.