Noise Pollution - Making a Complaint
The Environmental Health Division
always encourage you to speak to your neighbour directly when
problems arise as more often than not the person/business that is
being complained about is not aware that they are creating a
problem for others. Further, we know from experience that making a
formal complaint can often place a strain on the relationship
between you and your neighbours and that this may continue for some
time. We appreciate however that this might be too daunting for
some or indeed prove unsuccessful; you may have tried
this before.
If you are having problems with
your neighbour be they business or domestic then we recommend the
following procedure;
Step 1
You will need to contact the Environmental Health Division to
discuss your current problem. At the time of your call or following
receipt of your letter or email an officer will advise you of the
current procedure and will explain the options available to
you.
Step 2
You will be required to provide
details of both yourself and the address you are complaining about.
The Environmental Health Division does not accept anonymous
complaints, nor does it divulge any of your details to an outside
party. The reasoning behind this is that you too have a vital part
in the complaint investigation and also ensures that we can contact
you with updates and questions if we need to.
At this stage the complaint
procedure will be explained to you. The investigating officer will
advise you as to the best way forward and may be a pack will be
sent out providing you with details of the options that are
available to you, if appropriate, or you wish to consider your next
step. At this stage your complaint is only registered on our
system as an enquiry.
Step 3
If after receiving the information
pack (or decided with the officer) you decide that a formal
investigation is the only option available to you then you will
need to contact the Division again; the pack contains a form etc to
make this easy for you. On receipt of further contact your
original enquiry will be logged as a formal complaint.
You will then receive a letter
confirming your complaint; we expect to get this letter to you
within 5 days of your complaint although it is normally sooner. The
letter will advise you of our actions and also detail the
requirements for the completion of diary sheets; we suggest you
keep diary records for 2 - 3 weeks and then return them to us.
Where your approach to the council has not meant
that you have spoken to an officer, then the investigating
officer should endeavour to speak to the complainant to get a clear
picture of all the issues, to enable Considered Professional
Opinion on the progression of the complaint and provide any
advice. Should this direct verbal contact not be possible or unduly
delays the process, formal letters and diary sheets shall be
instigated .
The requirement for diary sheets is
due to the nature of the legislation available to us. Statutory
nuisance deals with frequent, lengthy occurrences and how they
affect your ability to enjoy your own home; it does not cover one
off or infrequent events or low level disturbance.
At the same time we will also send
a letter to the person you are complaining about explaining that a
complaint has been made and asking them to look at remedying the
situation informally. We are also required to advise them that they
will be the subject of an investigation should the problem
continue.
Step 4
Where a complaint continues and you
return the diary sheets, an officer will determine whether the
information provided, points to a problem which might be
appropriate for investigation under statutory nuisance. If this is
the case you will be contacted and advised of our plans for further
investigation; during this time you may be required to continue
with diary sheets to support our work. In some cases we may
consider that there is insufficient evidence to take your complaint
further; should this be the case we will contact you to discuss any
options available to you.
Options available to us for further
investigations include the installation of noise recording
equipment and also officer attendance where this is considered
appropriate.
Step 5
Where we establish that further
investigation is required we will work in accordance with our
Enforcement Policy; in most cases the first or indeed second letter
to the person you are complaining about normally solves the
problem. Where this is not the case we will consider the
enforcement options available to us and act accordingly whilst
keeping you up to date with our actions. This work will continue
until the situation is remedied.
Before Making a Complaint...
If you would like to view
our advice on the most frequently received noise complaints then go
to;
To make a complaint
please contact us.
