Contrary to previous years in which the number of complaints on urban planning operations diminished, in 2016 the grievances to the Ombudsman have increased, maybe due to the strengthening of the economic activity. In any case, social problems persist, which is reflected in the substantial number of complaints about housing support and social housing. In both urban planning and housing, special mention should be made to the New Urban Agenda adopted by the United Nations at the Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development, known as Habitat III, which establishes standards for sustainable urban development. It is indeed also up to the Ombudsman to working towards achieving the purposes of Habitat III, namely the defense of an urban development model that integrates the different aspects of sustainable development, promotes equity and well-being and combats social exclusion. Looking at the Ombudsman’s activities over the last year related to environmental, urban planning and cultural issues it may be concluded that most complaints on environmental matters, as much as 61% of the total, had to do with noise emissions; most of the complaints on planning were about infrastructures and extra-contractual civil liability (61%) and most of the complaints on urbanism and housing were about private construction works (35%). A high number of citizens’ complaints (235) were related to different public services (utilities) such as electricity (33%), water (23%), electronic communications (17%), postal services (9%) and gas (7%). In 2016, the Ombudsman made four recommendations on topics as diverse as local referendum (Recommendation No. 1/A/2016), urban management of the Lisbon riverfront (Recommendation No. 5/A/2016), highways consumer’s rights (Recommendation No. 6/A/2016) and Special Rehabilitation Program for Metropolitan Areas of Lisbon and Porto (Recommendation No. 3/B/2016). Even if municipalities were the main entities targeted in the complaints (211), it should be noted that the Municipality of Lisbon only was aimed in 44. Another entity concerned in many complaints was EMEL, the municipal company that manages parking policy in Lisbon. Many of the Ombudsman’s cases, in particular concerning public services (utilities), aimed the regulatory bodies, such as ANACOM (the telecoms regulator), ERSE (Electricity Services Regulatory Entity) and ERSAR (Services Regulatory Authority for Water and Waste). Construction and housing In the field of building and construction, it has generally been observed that urban planning authorities in different municipalities are not able to respond promptly to | 33