IF you try to complain about a noisy late-night party in Oxford your call will now be answered 160 miles away near Manchester.

Oxford City Council has moved its out-of-hours call cover north after closing its own centre in Barton last month, making five staff redundant.

A contract has been agreed with a call centre in Cheshire. Call handlers will pass on details of disturbances to the council’s duty environmental health officer in Oxford.

Last month, the Oxford Mail revealed that the number of out-of-hours complaints about noise received by the council had doubled in the past six years,meaning a lone on-call officer had to deal with up to 60 incidents each weekend.

Summertown Liberal Democrat councillor Jean Fooks, who tried to call the service last week, said the new phone system was cumbersome, confusing and had not been properly publicised.

She added: “If you ring the old hotline number, it now tells you to ring the main switchboard line.

“You then get asked if you want half-a-dozen services, one of which is the out-of-hours noise service.”

Mrs Fooks said: “I eventually got through and tried to explain the situation but the guy said ‘I don’t know Oxford, I’m in Manchester’.

“The poor guys in Manchester are doing their best, but they have absolutely no local knowledge. This isn’t a good replacement.”

Anthony Cheke, who lives in Hurst Street, East Oxford, called the out-of-hours number to report a rowdy party.

He said: “They were perfectly helpful, but it did mean I had to spoon feed them a great deal more information than if they were in Oxford.”

The council’s out-of-hours service takes more than 2,000 calls a year about noisy parties, building work and music from pubs and clubs.

The control centre in Barton that dealt with complaints was closed after it lost the contract to run Oxfordshire County Council’s mobile warden service for people in sheltered housing.

The city council said the loss of the contract meant it was no longer cost-effective to keep the centre open.

John Tanner, who is the executive member responsible for the service, said callers should not notice a change in the level of service.

He added: “This has given us the opportunity to look at the instructions we give to call centre staff, and I expect it to work smoothly.”

Council spokesman Louisa Dean said: “The new call centre is in Cheshire and is part of a registered social housing organisation who are experienced in dealing with these type of calls.

“The operators follow a set criteria when dealing with the calls and will either call the duty officer or notify the office the next working day.”

  • Residents can contact the call centre on 01865 249811 outside office hours about urgent problems. For non-urgent matters or inquiries they should call 01865 252887 during office hours.