Claims Fife has the noisiest neighbours in Scotland have been deemed “unfair”.
Gordon Hope, a team leader with Fife Council’s housing department, believes the number of noise complaints made by residents is due to the measures the local authority has in place to tackle such problems.
An analysis of nationwide council data showed Fife Council received more than 19,000 complaints relating to concerns about noise, household disrepair and animals in the first nine months of last year the only Scottish local authority in the UK top 10.
However, the findings were disputed by Mr Hope as he addressed councillors in Kirkcaldy.
He said Fife Council was a victim of its own success for putting in measures to help the public report such problems.
“I’ve worked in the housing sector for a long time and in various roles and I don’t think that Fife is any worse than other areas,” said Mr Hope.
“We have good mechanisms in place to encourage people to come forward and deal with anti-social behaviour. We work well with the police and the Community Safety Partnership.
“To say we are the worst in the country is unfair as I think we do our job very well.”
Mr Hope’s comments received support from Kirkcaldy councillors, who agreed efforts to tackle anti-social behaviour had proven effective.
Susan Leslie, the Liberal Democrat councillor for Burntisland, Kinghorn and Western Kirkcaldy, said: “I don’t think it is about high levels of noise but about the high level of engagement with tenants.”
Fife Council had initially stated its concerns that comparing regions was hard to do because of the different way in which complaints were catalogued by local authorities.
Council leader David Ross said that while anti-social behaviour was tackled accordingly in Fife, more measures could soon be at the council’s disposal.
He said: “There is a housing bill going through the Scottish Parliament that does touch on adding ways of tackling anti-social behaviour, so hopefully that gives us more clout.”