Noise is unwanted sound, too loud, duration too long or without warning. Noise Nuisance is used in law which affects the enjoyment of your home.
Noise nuisance is covered by Part lll of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.
This law empowers local authorities to deal with noise from fixed premises.
Before action is taken the officers have to be sure that the noise constitutes a statutory nuisance. This means that the noise has to be proved to be prejudicial to health and/or is causing an unreasonable persistent disturbance to your lifestyle.
When is noise a statutory nuisance? The noise can be too loud, too intrusive wrong time. Barking Dogs; loud music; home and car alarms; DIY and motor repairs; repetitive bass beats. Your response to the noise must be wholly reasonable.
Reporting a Noise Nuisance
The council in the summer months (from May until the end of September) have a Noisy Party Patrol consisting of an environmental health officer supported by police which operates on a Saturday night keeping an ear out for loud parties and responding to complaints about excessive noise between 11pm and 3am. To contact the council, the phone number is 020 8686 4433, or to speak to an environmental health officer, ring the council Monday – Friday between 9am and 5pm on 020 8760 5483.
In general terms enforcement action can be taken with a legal notice being served and failure to comply can result in a fine of up to £5,000.
All residents need to be conscious of the effects of noise, including barbeques.
The Council does not have any jurisdiction for rail, traffic or aircraft noise.
Noise Nuisance concerning roads can be a matter for the Police. This can relate in particular to motor cycles, low powered scooters with noisy exhausts, and also cheap mini scooters and the like which are not registered for road use.
In many cases these are unfortunately as per the manufacturers’ specification which means that the noise created by them cannot be classified as due to the machines being unroadworthy. However, if there is consistent driving up and down a particular section of road, this could become a nuisance (as well as dangerous driving if going too fast round corners or doing wheelies), but it has to be monitored and the culprits caught in the act.
Similar monitoring would be necessary with these mini scooters but as these are not registered for road use, if they are used on public roads then the Police have more opportunity to act.
The Kenley Ward Safer Neighbourhood team based at Kenley Police Station is the first contact point between 10.00 am and 10.00pm weekdays.