What is nuisance noise?
What is defined as nuisance noise can vary upon personal circumstances. While loud music may be acceptable to some, others may like to eat their dinner in quiet or be able to get to sleep at a reasonable hour. Most people would say noise was a nuisance when it interferes with their day to day living.
What is the law?
The majority of noise nuisance is controlled under Part III of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. However before action can be taken we have to be sure the noise constitutes a statutory nuisance. This means that we have to be able to prove that the noise is prejudicial to health and is an unreasonable disturbance to your lifestyle. The Noise Act 1996 also allows the Council to deal with night noise (between 11pm and 7am).
Construction sites are also a common source of noise. The Council has powers to control building noise under Section 60 of the Control of Pollution Act 1974 and we also employ standard hours in which all noisy work should take place. These hours are from 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday,8am to 1pm on Saturdays with all noisy work prohibited on Sundays and Bank Holidays.
What will the council do?
Complaints made to Castle Morpeth Borough Council’s Environmental Health Section are prioritised in terms of harm. We have 24 hour response for emergencies and some urgent situations.
Each complaint is risk assessed and our typical general response is shown below.
In the majority of cases our normal procedure is to ask you the complainant to keep a record of disturbance, which we will supply, so we can establish if a statutory nuisance is present and in some cases we may also install recording equipment, or visit to witness the problem ourselves.
We try to resolve all cases informally, if both parties agree we can arrange for a mediation service to become involved, however this is not always possible and a more formal route may be used.
Typical response time service standard
| As soon as practicable and within 2 hours |
As soon as practicable and same working day |
Within 2 working days |
Resolution aim
|
Emergency aspect will be resolved on the same day |
Resolved within 3 months |
Resolved within 3 months |
Definitions
Emergency: Imminent Danger to health life or limb or acute serious pollution of the Environment.
Urgent: Response needed to secure evidence, or delayed response would render our intervention inappropriate.
Routine: Not Emergency or Urgent.