Pensioner escapes jail over noise complaints after daughter caused a racket
A pensioner, whose daughter caused a racket in his social housing flat, has narrowly escaped being sent to prison.
William Robinson, 68, from Walsall, was described as a ‘weak man’, who was unable to control his adult daughter, Lindsay.
But Judge Philip Gregory said he couldn’t see the point of further clogging up the already over-crowded prison system by sending Mr Robinson to prison.
Terrified of being locked up, Mr Robinson had moved out of his waterside flat in Cardan Pointe ‘at the eleventh hour.
Walsall Housing Group, now known as whg, took Robinson to court after neighbours complained of ‘shouting and screaming, the banging of doors and suchlike’.
To make his neighbours’ lives ‘more bearable’, he promised to stop the noise nuisance and ‘desist from antisocial behaviour’ in September.
But that promise was breached and, in January was handed a 12-week suspended jail term. Judge Gregory said: “It was quite apparent that the real problem at this address was the behaviour of his daughter, Lindsay Robinson.”
He added Ms Robinson was effectively living with her father, although no permission for her to do so had been sought from Walsall Housing Group.
Walsall Housing Group applied to have Mr Robinson committed to prison for contempt of court on May 30, but he ‘had not bothered to turn up’.
The judge heard ‘honest, truthful and reliable’ evidence from three of his neighbours. He also said that he would have sent Mr Robinson straight to prison had it not been for his decision to move out the night before the hearing.
He is now lodging with his sister, Walsall County Court heard.
Debbie Davies, defending, said Mr Robinson was ‘effectively devoted to his daughter and extremely protective of her’.
Mr Robinson was handed a four-month jail term for contempt of court, but that sentence was suspended for six months on condition that he ‘keeps away’ from his old address.
