How to make an official complaint
Collecting evidence to support your complaint
Gathering evidence and supporting information about the noise complaint is a key part of any investigation of alleged noise nuisance.
Tools:
How to gather your evidence
- complete all sections of the nuisance record sheet, make sure you capture the facts of each incident and the effect on you or your family.
- keep records for at least two weeks or six entries.
- make sure you enter both a start and finish time for the noise. If you only enter a start time we have no idea how long the noise continues. It is also important to be accurate about the duration of the noise – if you enter misleading information and the investigation moves on to noise monitoring the recordings will not verify the information and the case is likely to be closed due to lack of evidence.
- if anyone else witnessed the nuisance and would be willing to support you, remember to put their details in the “name of other witnesses” column. This is most useful when the witness is independent of your family e.g. police, housing officer
- try to keep entries as legible as possible, and if you have a complaint reference number remember to include this in the box provided.
- we cannot be responsible for the loss of any evidence submitted, so please remember to keep a copy.
This evidence will help us find out if the problem is a statutory noise nuisance.
What happens with the evidence
Once you have submitted your evidence, your case is passed to a specialist noise officer who will contact you. At the same time, the case officer will contact the person making the noise; giving them a summary of the information you have submitted and asking them to consider steps to reduce the noise.
We will not identify where the information is from, but this maybe obvious particularly if you are the only person affected, for example noise through the party wall of a semi-detached property.
If the noise continues, please contact us immediately. It is usually necessary for us to arrange noise monitoring to collect additional evidence to support the evidence you have already provided.
Noise monitoring
To arrange further noise monitoring it is likely that we will need to come into your property and access your living areas. We will either install noise monitoring equipment, which you can use to record noise when it is happening. Alternatively, we can arrange to be there to witness the noise in your home.
