2.Main Content
1996 Neighbour mediation
This page contains an outline of this research, and a summary of the key findings. Details of how to find the full report can be found at the bottom of the page.
Title
“Neighbour disputes: Comparing the cost-effectiveness of mediation and alternative approaches”
What is it about?
The objectives of the researchers were to provide an up-to-date overview of the work of community mediation services and local authority housing and environmental health service departments and to compare the cost-effectiveness of procedures for handling neighbour disputes.
Who did it?
The research was carried out by Jim Dignan, Angela Sorsby and Jeremy Hibbert of the Centre for Criminological and Legal Research at the University of Sheffield. It was commissioned by Mediation UK and funded by the Department of the Environment and the Lankelly Foundation, and the report was published in October 1996.
Key findings
The authors surveyed 34 community mediation services and 57 local authorities and undertook a number of detailed case studies involving four community mediation services, three housing departments and one environmental health department.
The study attempts to give a “best estimate” of the total number of neighbour nuisance complaints recorded by housing and environmental departments in England Wales and examines the approaches used by mediation providers and local authorities. The authors identify the types of costs involved in resolving these cases, including direct quantifiable costs, opportunity costs, and emotional costs.
The authors note the difficulties in trying to carry out a conventional cost-effectiveness comparison in this area, including:
- neighbour dispute mediation is largely carried out by voluntary sector organisations using unpaid mediators.
- comparing outcomes of the two approaches is difficult because success is not measured in identical ways.
- differences between mediation and local authority responses are so acute that it is impossible to compare like with like.
Despite the difficulties, the authors attempt to conduct a comparison of cost-effectiveness of local authority and mediation approaches to neighbour disputes. Based on admittedly crude calculations of the cost to local authority departments (using only salary and related staff costs), the authors find that an average of £50 is likely to be spent on every ‘live’ neighbour dispute case. With average costs (to complete a case) ranging from £81 to £251 for the mediation services studied, on the face of it the local authority approach looks to be more cost-effective. Yet the authors point out that the vast majority of neighbour dispute cases receive very little attention from local authorities; the £50 average represents a small amount of input. It also represents any action taken over the course of a year, not the real costs of resolving a case. (To complete a case is much more costly; the cost of any formal action and its related costs can run from £800 for a transfer to nearly £4,000 for a possession order). Nor does the average figure take into account the costs of any other public agency’s involvement in handling the dispute, such as social services or the police.
For a more recent review of the comparative costs of resolving community and neighbour disputes, see 2003 Neighbour mediation and ASB.
This research is not available on the internet. It is published as: Dignan, J., Sorsby, A., Hibbert, J. ‘Neighbour Disputes – Comparing the Cost Effectiveness of Mediation & Alternative Approaches’, Centre for Criminological & Legal Research, University of Sheffield, 1996.
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