Noise

We do not provide an out of hours service for complaints about parties.

If we receive a complaint from you about neighbours playing loud music, we will send a letter to the alleged offender(s) asking them to keep the volume down. Often this solves the problem. We will also ask you to keep a record of the noise and how it affects you on diary sheets for a few days or weeks, depending on how often the noise occurs.

If the noise continues and we can see from your diary that it is unreasonable and therefore could constitute a noise nuisance we will serve an informal notice on the alleged offender.

If the noise persists, we will attempt to visit your property at the times the noise normally occurs to witness a nuisance. We can then serve a legal notice under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 requiring the offender to stop causing a nuisance.

It is an offence not to comply with this notice and if a pollution enforcement officer witnesses a contravention of the notice we will usually prosecute the offender.

The council can also apply to the magistrate's court for a warrant to enter premises and seize equipment that is causing a nuisance. If we prosecute we will normally apply to the court to have the equipment permanently confiscated.