Our Noise Nuisance Procedure
This procedure outlines the process we will follow when we receive a noise complaint from you about a business in Central Bedfordshire. Please note there may be times when we do not follow this process, if there are justifiable reasons for doing so.
First steps
- When we receive a complaint, we will contact you as soon as possible and at least within 5 working days. We are likely to recommend that you politely speak or contact the person or business responsible to try and resolve the matter informally if you haven’t already tried to do so.
- We’ll ask you for more details of the problem including the:
- nature of the noise – continuous, intermittent, frequency characteristics (rumble, whistle, whine, clatter, etc)
- duration of the noise – when it started, time periods, day or night-time problem, if it is seasonal only
- effects of the noise – interrupt sleep etc
- number of people affected
- If the problems described are covered by the law we enforce (read more about what we enforce), we’ll contact the business and make them aware of the details of your complaint.
- Don’t worry we won’t tell them who has complained to us.
- If the problems described are not covered by the law, we enforce we will also let you know and where we can suggest other actions you could take or refer you to other services areas or agencies, or where appropriate and with your permission we’ll refer the matter for you.
- We will ask you to complete diary sheets for a time we agree with you but usually 14 days, there is guidance provided with the sheets to help you.
- Once these are returned to us, we’ll look at them and decide what actions we should take.
- If there is not enough detail on the sheets to allow us to decide what we do next, then we’ll ask you to add this or complete the diary sheets for longer.
- If the details show that the problem is unlikely to be a statutory nuisance, we will also let you know and close the case.
- If the diary sheets are not returned to us, then within four weeks we’ll close your case.
Next steps
- If the dairy sheets you return to us show that there could be a statutory nuisance, we’ll carry out a more detailed assessment.
- This could involve:
- Site visits
- Installation of noise monitoring equipment to record the noise.
- We’ll ask you to keep completing the diary sheets whilst we are doing this.
- Please note for us to able to take formal action an officer must have witnessed the nuisance first-hand and you must be prepared to act as a witness with your diary sheets provided as evidence.
- As a rule, we’ll make a maximum of 3 visits.
- We will look to make the initial visit within 4 weeks of receiving your diary sheets back.
- We’ll also let the business know that we have received complaints and ask them for their co-operation in the matter.
- If our investigations fail to show that a statutory nuisance exists, we’ll let you know and close the case.
- If from our detailed assessment a statutory nuisance is confirmed, and the business is not following the “best practical means” to deal with the noise, we will issue an abatement notice.
- Please note the business could decide to appeal the notice which, in most cases, would suspend the notice and allow them to continue operating as though the notice had not been served.
- If the business complies with the notice your complaint will be closed. If not, we’ll gather evidence to show this and once we have this, we’ll prepare a prosecution report for our legal services.