Noisy neighbour update

Will keep it shorti(ish), as I could go on at great length!

Had a funny couple of weekend, with the restaurant over the road going for it twice a week on their party nights. Seriously f**king annoying, pounding bass. Although with the storms this week, not so much cavorting in the street! Anyway…

First week, called the council and got nowhere. Nobody at all on duty it seems, so I just logged it all in my diary, and chalked it up. (Grrr)

Most recent weekend though, got through to out of hours licensing squad, and managed to get two of them to visit the house to witness what we were living with. To my (genuine) amazement, they basically said “this is fine”. Yes it’s loud. Yes it’s annoying. But it’s not a “a statutory noise nuisance”. One of em even said “that car that just drove past is in my opinion making more noise”.

Utter bonk said I. It simply cannot be acceptable to cause my house to vibrate, can it? And you’re seriously suggesting the occasional car driving by is somehow worse than hours of f**king Uptown Funk bass vibes?? Get. To f**k.

They weren’t even able to give me an answer to the question “what would constitute a statuary noise nuisance”. Just “much worse than this”. “I’ve been in places where the floor is shaking”.

I mean, mad, and thoroughly dispiriting. Also, totally at odds with what other folk from the council had told me.

So, I had a good fume on Sunday, but decided to up the ante. Called the council on Monday and after a long wait, spoke to the far more helpful person I spoke to before, and got her to send me a copy of their licence. And what do you know, it contains a whole raft of premises specific conditions.

- no music to be played that is audible at noise sensitive properties after 11.
- any music played after 11 cannot include any bass instruments (list provided)

Plus, a whole bunch of other door control measure they are simply ignoring.

The planners that allowed the restaurant to open there clearly understood this is a quiet street, and specifically put in a bunch of stuff to ensure that it stays that way. There is also a specific “no noise disturbance” condition on their planning applications and their opening hours permission, which surely must mean that “statutory noise nuisance” is not the relevant test - the planners again clearly had a tougher test in mind to preserve the nature of the street. Nobody can make a statutory noise nuisance at any time, so if that was all they wanted to prevent, why put an extra condition in?

So I’ve sent a long email to the council to point all this out, and am trying to arrange for someone that has actually read this restaurant’s licence/planning conditions to visit to observe this weekend. The relevant question is not “is the floor shaking”, but “can I hear it”. If I can, it’s a breach. Ditto for bass. The stipulation is “no bass”, not some bass might be okay in the judgement of an idiot.

Now very hopeful this will be sorted, as it seems totally clear the place is clearly in breach of multiple aspects of their licence.

My main takeaways from all this are:

- some people at the council don’t know what they’re taking about.
- don’t just take the first answer if you don’t like it.
- equally, if there were no specific provisions in this restaurants licence, it would appear that the statutory provisions would allow them to do pretty much whatever the hell they like, and there might well be f**k all that could be done about it. This may be why neighbour to neighbour disputes are so hard to resolve - your neighbour won’t have any conditions placed on them.

Posted By: Under soil heating, Feb 22, 21:33:14