Noise

The Council is responsible for investigating excessive noise from domestic, commercial and industrial premises, including noise arising from burglar alarms.

Making a complaint

If you are annoyed by noise within the area of Hart District please contact us.  Contact details are available in the area to the right.  Your complaint will be recorded and passed on to a case officer.

The next step

First, the officer will contact you within three working days, normally by telephone. They will advise you that:

• The person you think is causing the noise (the alleged perpetrator) will be contacted and informed of the complaint, normally by letter.
• Your name and address will not be given out, although if the case goes to court, the Council may need you as a witness.
• If the problem continues, you should contact the Council again and keep a noise diary for two weeks which, when completed should be sent to your case officer

Once we have assessed your diary, the case officer will try to visit three times when they are most likely to witness the alleged noise.

If the noise only occurs outside office hours, the officer will visit during office hours to set up noise recording equipment.

If after all this, the Council is unable to take legal action, they will give you advice on further action you can take.

Legal Action

If the officer is satisfied that a statutory noise nuisance exists or is likely to happen again, they will serve a notice on the perpetrator under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. The notice will require them to stop causing the noise nuisance.

If the notice is not obeyed, a further investigation will have to be carried out. If the officer is satisfied that the notice is being contravened they will seek authority from the Head of Environmental Services to take legal proceedings against the perpetrator.

Please Note

The Council does not have to investigate complaints that are made anonymously.

All complaints will be dealt with in confidence, however, complainants may be asked to assist the Council if the matter of concern to them ends up in court.

We will try to resolve all noise complaints as quickly and effectively as possible. The Council will keep complainants updated with any developments in their case as they arise.

In an Emergency . . .

Such as with house alarms, car alarms, breaches of notices served or loud parties:

During office hours emergency complaints will be received as usual but the case will be passed to the first available case officer.

At weekends the department operates an emergency out of hours noise service, that can be contacted on 0845 677 0678.  Please note that this service only operates at weekends, from 6.00pm Friday until 08.30am Monday.

DIY & Construction Noise

All of us, at some time, carry out repairs or improvements to our homes. Carrying out DIY of this nature can often lead to noise from sawing, hammering, sanding etc.

Often DIY jobs take longer than originally anticipated!

The noise of DIY can be very annoying to neighbours, particularly when the work is being carried out on a party wall between houses.

In addition, DIY is often carried out in the evenings and weekends, when people find time to catch up on these tasks.

How to prevent problems

If you are intending to carry out some DIY which might take some time, to prevent causing problems you may like to have a chat with your neighbours and: -

discuss how long you anticipate the works will take

agree times, which are suitable for both, when the noisiest work can be carried out.

agree a time when noise will stop in the evenings (this is particularly important where the neighbours have small children)

If you are the person suffering noise

First of all, try having a friendly chat with your next door neighbour – it is quite possible that they haven’t even considered that the noise may effect you. By raising the issue with them, it may well resolve the issue in a friendly way.

If you have tried approaching your neighbour and they are still causing a large amount of noise, from the early morning or into the late night – you can contact the Council. We will normally write to the person concerned and ask them to co-operate in not causing a noise nuisance.

If after this time, they still cause noise problems, please keep a diary of when the noise occurs and return it to the Council. We will try to visit to witness the noise or install sophisticated noise equipment, to assess whether a Statutory Noise Nuisance is occurring. If it is, the Council will serve an abatement notice on the person concerned restricting the hours of work

Construction Noise

Sometimes you may find that near to you, a development of some sort is taking place.

For larger developments, or where the development is in a sensitive area, the times of working are often controlled under a condition attached to the planning permission.

In these cases, the hours of working are restricted to: -

Mon - Fri 7.30am-6pm

Saturday - 8.00am-1pm

Sunday and Bank Holidays - No working

If you are suffering noise problems as a result of a development, please contact the Planning Department, who will let you know if a planning condition is being breached.

If the development did not have the planning condition attached to the permission, it is still possible for the Council to act.

Contact the Environmental Health Department, who may be able to serve a notice under the Control of Pollution Act 1974, controlling the hours of working. Failure to comply with such a notice is an offence and could lead to the prosecution of the developer.

Army Training Exercise Noise

For information regarding scheduled army training exercises please see the download area to the right of this page.