If the noise you report is clearly unreasonable noise, we'll contact you within 48 working hours. If you make a report over a weekend or bank holiday, it may take us slightly longer.
For most noise reports we’ll:
- Talk to you first. We can act quicker if you've left us a telephone number so that we can call you. If you don't have a number, we'll send you a letter or email you.
- Ask you to talk to your neighbour if you haven't already.
- Speak to other neighbours to understand how they are affected.
- Talk to the person causing the noise. Often this is enough to solve the problem.
- Ask you to contact your local environmental health team to report the issue
- Suggest you download and use 'the noise app'. Further information can be found on the noise app website. Please note, before using this app, you should contact us and sign the 'Conditions of reasonable use' agreement.
After that we may:
- Arrange for mediation between you and your neighbour to find a way of resolving things.
- Work with the environmental health team at your local council to solve the issue. Sometimes they're the best people to lead the investigation as they have different powers to deal with noise nuisance.
- Get the person causing the noise to sign an Anti-Social Behaviour Contact (ABC). Or get the parent or guardian of a young person to sign a Parenting Contract to stop the noise. Although these aren't legal documents, we can use them in court if we need to take legal action.
- Lend you noise monitoring technology and ask you to fill out an incident diary form each time the noise happens.
- Get an injunction. This is a court order that requires someone to do, or not to do something. We need to gather evidence to apply for one.
- Evict the person from their home. This is always a last resort and can take a very long time.
We do our best to sort out issues within 90 days and will update you every 2 weeks on what's happening with your case. If we have to take legal action to resolve the issue this may take considerably longer.