Memorandum from the Chartered Institute
of Environmental Health (CIEH)
ABOUT THE
CHARTERED INSTITUTE
Founded in 1883, the Chartered Institute of
Environmental Health (CIEH) is a professional and educational
body dedicated to the promotion of the discipline of environmental
health and to encouraging the highest possible standards in the
training and work of those who practice it. Based in London, it
has approximately 9,500 members, most of whom work in local authorities
in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Apart from providing services
and information to them, the Chartered Institute also advises
government departments on environmental health and is routinely
consulted by them on matters relevant to the work of environmental
health officers. The Chartered Institute received its Royal Charter
in 1984. It has since become a Collaborating Centre of the World
Health Organisation.
BACKGROUND
Our focus on noise
Our interest in noise matters grew around the
beginning of the 1960s with the introduction of the Noise Abatement
Act 1960 which, following an interim recommendation of the Wilson
Committee, provided inter alia that noise which amounted
to a nuisance should be a statutory nuisance for the purposes
of Pt III of the Public Health Act 1936. Enforced by local authorities,
that was replaced by the Control of Pollution Act 1974 (CoPA)
and at the same time, the Health and Safety at Work etc Act introduced
a responsibility to control workplace noise which continues.
The CoPA has itself now been largely replaced
by the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (the EPA) though some
of its provisions, particularly those relating to construction
noise, remain in force. The EPA has since been amended significantly
by the 1993 Noise and Statutory Nuisance Act, adding noise from
vehicles, machinery and equipment in the street to noise emitted
from premises to the list of potential statutory nuisances. More
recently it has been augmented, with a night noise offence and
powers to seize noise-making equipment, by the Noise Act 1996.
An increasing variety of other statutes including the new Licensing
Act and the Anti-social Behaviour Act also have something to say
on the topic of neighbourhood noise and there is an argument that
all of these provisions should be consolidated. (One counter-argument
is, of course, that this would represent a degree of de-consolidation
of some other provisions.)
The focus of all of these provisions (and the
focus of most of the CIEH's members who deal with noise) is on
what is sometimes called "neighbourhood noise". Wider
than mere neighbour noise (though the terms are often used without
precision), this includes noise from local sources such as entertainment
venues and small businesses.
Though the Police have been given some express
powers, for example under the Licensing Act 2003, for the most
part the responsible authorities for neighbourhood noise are local
councils. They have few powers over transport noise, however—none,
in fact, over traffic (though planning powers can affect this
indirectly), none over aircraft (aeroplanes or helicopters) in
flight, and little over trains/stations. Noise control of so-called
"Part A" installations under the integrated pollution
prevention and control (IPPC) regime is becoming a matter for
both local authorities and the Environment Agency as different
industrial sectors are brought within it (a phased process due
to be completed by 2007).
The health effects of noise
The locus of public authorities to intervene
in noise derives from its potential effects on health in its broad
sense. The health effects of noise are divisible into two—auditory
and non-auditory. The first are about impairment of hearing and
occur almost exclusively in workplace settings. Environmental
noise levels do not produce these effects. Non-auditory effects
include (most commonly) annoyance, sleep disturbance, interruption
of speech and social interaction, disturbance of concentration
(and hence of learning and long-term memory) and hormonal and
cardiovascular effects, though it is debateable to what extent
all of these effects are actually to do with health or, indeed,
harmful. Though often suggested, there is, however, no evidence
that noise per se induces mental illness, though there is some
to suggest that noise-sensitive people are more prone to mental
illness and that the effects of noise may be more pronounced in
mentally-ill people.
Sources of neighbour noise
The sources of neighbour noise are many and
varied but what people complain about is not what necessarily
affects them most.
(Col 1: By % of people reporting themselves
adversely affected, [Noise Attitude Survey, BRE for defra, 2000]
Col 2: by numbers of complaints to Environmental
Health Departments, [National Society for Clean Air, 2002])
| Voices | 11%
| 5th |
| Radio/TV/hi-fi | 9%
| 1st |
| Children | 8%
| 6th |
| Dogs | 7%
| 2nd |
| Cars starting etc | 5%
| |
| DIY | 4%
| 3rd |
| Doors | 4%
| 4th |
| Lawnmowers | 3%
| |
| Footfalls | 1%
| |
| Vacuum cleaners/Washing machines
| 1% | |
| Intruder alarms | —
| 7th |
| | |
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The remainder of this memorandum attempts to answer the questions
set out in the announcement (12 February 2004) of the Committee's
Inquiry. Coming after the Chartered Institute's oral evidence,
it should be read in conjunction with that.
Q1: What is the scale of the impact of these crimes [neighbourhood
noise] on the local environment?
First of all, as far as noise goes, "crime" is
too restrictive a term. For the most part, making a noise, even
a very loud noise in the middle of the night, is not a crime (though
it may well be a tort). There are some exceptions, eg. where a
prohibition is in force or operating a loud-speaker in the street
outside permitted hours, but as a rule, the criminal law only
comes into play when an instruction to stop making a noise is
ignored.
Is that right? Probably yes—our experience is that
many perpetrators of noise do not realise the effect they are
having (confirmed MORI, 2003) and it is not unreasonable to give
them a chance to "pipe down" before exerting the full
force of the law. It does, however, mean there has to be someone
available to tell them to do so.
The impact of these incidents, crimes or otherwise, on people
is nonetheless difficult to assess. We have some quantitative
data, in particular from the CIEH's own unique annual survey,
but little qualitative data. What we do have is often difficult
to interpret.
We know, for example, that during 2002-03, the 290 (of 376
= 77%) English and Welsh local authorities which responded to
the CIEH survey received between them just over 224,000 complaints
of domestic noise along with c. 80,000 of noise from other sources.
We understand that noise generates more complaints to local authorities
than any other subject. The total number substantiated as statutory
nuisances (the intervention threshold), however, was only just
over 35,000; while, encouragingly, the total numbers have been
fairly static for the past five years (see the bar chart below,
taken from the CIEH's draft Noise Management Guide)(following
a long, upward trend beginning in the 1970s), the proportion substantiated
has dropped from c. 50% to c. 15%. This may be due to lack of
evidence where a noise was, actually, a nuisance but there is
anecdotal evidence that just as there is now a greater readiness
to complain, (encouraged by greater accessibility of someone to
complain to) so there is a greater readiness to complain about
less serious noises. Verifying this is, however, difficult.
Source: Data from a cohort of 100 local authorities reporting
in each year 1997-98 to 2001-02, reproduced from the Draft Noise
Management Guide, CIEH 2003.
As for short-term impact, we know something about the daily
and weekly distribution of complaints from an analysis carried
out by EHOs in the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea.
Figures are for numbers of service requests per hour as % of
weekly total.
This shows peak complaints between 11.00pm and 2.00am on
Saturday nights. This is a typical pattern.
Another indication that the rise in complaints is not reflective
of a worsening neighbourhood noise climate comes from the Noise
Incidence Survey (NIS)(BRE for DEFRA, 2000) which said that typical
outdoor sound levels had actually decreased slightly between 1990
and 2000 (steady in London) although there was an indication of
a slight worsening of background levels at night, especially late
at night and early in the morning (the "lengthening day"
effect—more pronounced in London). The principal culprit,
however, was traffic which generates relatively few complaints.
Though the contemporary Noise Attitude Survey (NAS) says that
whereas 84% of respondents heard traffic noise, and 40% were bothered
by it, the reason seems to be that they become habituated to it.
The same survey nevertheless reported that whereas 57% of
residents' home lives were not at all spoiled by neighbour noise
(and noise was ranked only ninth overall in a list of environmental
problems—below dog fouling, litter and loss of greenbelt
land), 81% of them heard noise from their neighbours and 37% were
disturbed, bothered or annoyed to some extent. Just last year,
a further survey, by MORI for DEFRA provided similar figures,
suggesting that some 63% of people hear their neighbours though
only 46% of them are annoyed by that (29% overall) and 14% say
it is a sufficient problem to affect their lives.
Around one in 10 people claim to have made a complaint about
neighbour noise to someone (noise maker, Police, local authority,
landlord) at some time though clearly, nothing like that number
is recorded by local authorities (which report an annual complaint
rate of only about five in 1,000) and these surveys still tell
us little about the quality of the noise experienced—were
these people disturbed daily or just once, was it for five minutes
or five hours? Objectively, just how disturbing was it? We don't
know. What we do know is that neighbour noise is perceived as
more annoying because of features such as its irregular nature,
that it shows a lack of consideration and that it has no utility.
Inability to control it is a key factor. It is regarded as an
invasion of privacy. This illustrates the social factors at play
here—the perception of noise is not just a matter of acoustics
though it does affect different people in different ways—it
is often a complaint, for example, that the legislation (because
of its origins in the common law of nuisance) takes no account
of unusual sensitivities, especially to low frequency noise. Noise
complaints are also often bound up with broader, and long-running,
neighbour disputes.
The distribution of noise problems is certainly uneven: "Risk
factors" for neighbour noise appeared to include high density
housing (especially high-rise flats), rented accommodation and
living in areas of deprivation (though that is not borne out by
the CIEH's survey). Not surprisingly, people living in detached
houses, in rural or suburban areas of mainly owner-occupied housing
and in least deprived areas are least bothered by neighbour noise.
What does all this mean?
In summary, neighbourhood noise is a fact of life for most
people (84% to 63%) and doesn't bother them unduly. A significant
minority, however, find it annoying to some degree from time-to-time
(46% to 37%) though fewer claim it actually affects their lives
(-14%). Even fewer have ever complained to anyone (10% of people,
ever) while even fewer have felt compelled to complain to their
local authority (-0.5% each year).
Overall, it is not a big problem at population level (hence
in the NAS, noise was rated only 9th in the list of environmental
concerns) though that is not to say it is not a big problem for
those affected, especially if no solution can be found. Local
authorities nevertheless spend a lot of time and money on the
subject.
Q2: Has there been a cultural change in attitudes to these
kind of crimes and are they being treated more or less seriously
than in the past?
There is a suggestion from the NIS that people are becoming
more sensitive. Whereas, as said, daytime noise levels (mainly
due to traffic) generally decreased slightly between 1990 and
2000, more people interviewed thought traffic noise had got worse
than thought it had got better.
Another indication of cultural change has been the rise in
the CIEH's figures for complaints (though they need to be viewed
cautiously). Though this has flattened out, the rise since the
1970s cannot be due solely to a deteriorating noise climate (though
that will be true in many individual cases, especially given that
this is a survey of complainants) both because it is not supported
by the other evidence (NIS found only a 5% increase in respondents
adversely affected by neighbour noise between 1990 and 2000) but
because of the scale—the number of domestic complaints went
up five-fold in 20 years and that is explicable only in terms
of a greater propensity to complain. That may be part of a greater
propensity to complain about everything (partly encouraged by
more publicity, knowing where to complain, greater accessibility
of local authorities etc) or it may illustrate a growing intolerance
of noise. That that is part of the picture is, we think, underlined
by the decreasing rate of substantiated complaints. Probably,
it is both.
There has certainly been a cultural change by the authorities—by
central government and by most local authorities. As for government,
the growing body of legislation (see appendix) speaks for itself
and DEFRA's current research programme contains no fewer than
22 noise projects. That much of this work may not be expressly
tagged as pat of the anti-social behaviour agenda does not mean
that it does not contribute to that or that the part played by
noise is not being taken seriously. At the same time, DEFRA maintains
the Noise Forum as a medium for discussions with a variety of
interested parties along with the cross-departmental Noise Research
Advisory Committee and the CIEH has for several years enjoyed
a particularly constructive relationship with the civil servants
responsible for noise and nuisance policy who do appear to have
the support of their Ministers. As for local authorities, 10 years
ago only 93 councils in England and Wales operated an out-of-hours
noise service; today it is 216. According to CIPFA (at 31.3.02)
some 9.6% of all environmental health staff time was spent on
noise control. This compares to 7.1% 10 years ago. The current
cost is c. £48.6 million per annum Though a few local authorities
do not seem to take noise as seriously as they might, at least
if their ability to return statistics is any guide, most have
coped with the rise in complaints without a commensurate increase
in resources and the result has been a gradually increasing rate
of formal resolutions with numbers of prosecutions, though low
in comparison to complaints, remaining historically high and numbers
of seizures increasing.
There are regular complaints that the Courts do not take
these cases as seriously as they might but there is little real
evidence for that, not least since the results are not collated
anywhere and the unique circumstances of each case make them difficult
to compare in any event. Recent calls (in the context of "environmental
justice") to transfer regulatory appeals, at least those
from businesses, to a new Environmental Tribunal, are difficult
to justify while there would be disadvantages too and the Magistrates
Association has recently issued a sentencing toolkit to its members
including information on dealing with noise cases. It might have
been improved if they had consulted the CIEH in its drafting but
it is a step forward nonetheless.
Reference is made to the Police role under Q4 below.
Q3: Do responsible bodies who deal with the problem and
its consequences have sufficient resources and powers to do so?
On the whole, we do think there are sufficient powers to
deal with neighbourhood noise, indeed it is difficult to conceive
of when one or two might actually be used but our typically incremental
approach to such problems means that they are scattered throughout
a number of statutes. This means they are less accessible to the
layman than they might be. Some have also been a long time coming.
We have in mind in particular the latest changes to the Building
Regulations which are of crucial importance to the occupiers of
new homes, especially when they are to built increasingly to higher
densities, and we are dismayed that proposals for post-completion
testing have been shelved on promises by housebuilders to improve
their performance. The acoustic performance of the existing housing
stock nevertheless falls often far short, indeed flat conversions
were not covered by Building Regulations at all until 1992, something
the consequence of which the government's new Decent Homes standard
does nothing to address
This is not to say that some minor changes (such as attaching
fixed penalties to offences under the EPA) might not be beneficial
or that some anomalies (such as the availability under the EPA
of the "best practicable means" defence to both the
service of an abatement notice and to prosecution) might not be
cleared up, nor that, despite that we might ask why intruder alarms
need be audible at all, the alarm provisions of the 1993 Act should
not yet be brought into force. Nor is it to say that we are not
concerned that existing powers are being constrained with the
emergence of new legislation bringing unintended barriers to the
control of noise. We have in mind here, for example, the Human
Rights Act which we understand is dissuading some Magistrates
from issuing Warrants to EHOs to enter premises to disable alarms
on the ground that to do so would be an invasion of privacy. We
might mention too the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA)
which appears to classify noise monitoring as "surveillance"
and on one reading might prevent the tape recording of noise,
hitherto a common technique. Some apparent inconsistency of advice
by the Surveillance Commission is unhelpful here.
But if the powers are broadly adequate, local authorities'
resources are constantly stretched. Noise investigation is a skilled
business requiring properly trained, experienced officers and,
sometimes, sophisticated equipment, often carried out at unsocial
times. Maintaining a 24/7 noise service can be expensive and,
even where that might be objectively justified, authorities may
decide they have other spending priorities while a downgrading
of the importance of environmental health in many local authorities
in recent years often leaves no-one at the top level of management
to argue the case anyway. The same staff are, in any event, often
responsible for other pollution control functions such as the
remediation of contaminated land and the control of atmospheric
emissions from industry and we have a sense that different parts
of government are often competing for their limited time. A better
overview of government's demands on local authorities would be
helpful. There is a tendency for resources and management attention
to follow indicators and the case for more resources for noise
control is moreover weakened by the lack of a performance indicator
for noise which might be reflected in an authorities' Comprehensive
Performance Assessments.
Q4: Is there sufficient dialogue and co-operation across
government and amongst the various bodies responsible for dealing
with the problem at a local level?
As government outsiders, this is difficult for the CIEH to
answer but noise is an issue in one way or another for most government
departments and dialogue between them appears generally to be
good. An example would be in the Noise Research Advisory Committee
of which the CIEH is the only NGO member though the Home Office
and the Department of Health seem not to be regular attendees.
The CIEH understands that DEFRA was not consulted by the Home
Office when the RIPA was being drafted; certainly the CIEH was
not consulted about it and the difficulties now being felt for
noise investigations might have been avoided if we had been. The
relationship between DEFRA and the devolved administrations in
Scotland, Wales and N Ireland also appears to be close and constructive.
Co-operation between local authorities and the Police is
as important as it is, unfortunately, variable. While when Police
assistance may be needed by EHOs to effect seizures of noise equipment
or to deal with noisy parties, help is normally forthcoming, subject
to more urgent demands, from the local level, the Police service
at the organisational level is more reluctant to be involved.
Examples of that can be found in the discarding by the Metropolitan
Police of keyholder information which owners of intruder alarms
in London are required to deposit with the Police; we understand
that it is a similar reluctance on the part of provincial forces
to keep this information which has prevented the introduction
of a like requirement under the 1993 Noise and Statutory Nuisance
Act elsewhere in the country. London local authorities have recently
reported similar difficulties accessing details of the keepers
of vehicles via the Metropolitan Police. The re-writing of the
CIEH's "Police Liaison Guide", first produced at the
suggestion of the government's 1993 Neighbour Noise Working Party
had to be postponed last year when ACPO was unable to nominate
a representative to take part.
Q5: What alternatives exist for dealing with these types
of crimes outside the criminal justice system?
Most neighbourhood noise is, in fact, already dealt with
informally, albeit against a statutory background (in particular
of the Environmental Protection Act) whose enforcement provisions
are criminal in character. Consistently, the great majority of
complaints are resolved with a "quiet word" (though
that option is not, in fact, recognised by the Act) and, even
when the formal process is invoked in the form of abatement notices,
it is still only when they are ignored that criminal sanctions
might be applied. The CIEH supports this model which has been
replicated more recently under the Noise Act. In both cases nevertheless,
the (temporary) seizure of noise-making equipment can provide
an effective remedy short of recourse to the courts.
Similarly, the newer anti-social behaviour orders are available
in principle to help deal with persistent noise makers though
we have no data to say how many have been issued in this context.
Like abatement notices, sanctions only come into play when these
orders are broken.
As the question implies, however, we do not believe that
the criminal law provides either the most appropriate or the only
tools in many cases. Neighbourhood noise problems are frequently
a product of many factors including spatial planning, housing
design, conflicting lifestyles etc and they need a combination
of education, better social controls, design, insulation etc factors
to combat them.
Q6: DOES
LOCAL ENVIRONMENTAL
CRIME HAVE
A DISPROPORTIONATE
IMPACT ON
POORER AND
LESS ADVANTAGED
SECTIONS OF
SOCIETY?
A survey by MORI for DEFRA last year would suggest that noise
does have a greater impact on poorer sections of society, highlighting
living in a deprived area as a risk factor for self-reported neighbour
noise. Insofar as neighbourhood noise is usually traffic dominated,
other work for DEFRA linking traffic emissions with deprivation
would support this indirectly and there is a striking similarity
in the London air quality and ambient noise maps. Ambient noise
levels are not, however, high for most people, even in deprived
areas, nor do they actually reflect individual noise exposure
well and the same relationship between deprivation and noise is
not seen in the CIEH's surveys where deprived areas are as likely
to show low rates of complaints as they are to show higher rates.
Whether environmental noise is a cause or effect of broader environmental
degradation is a moot point but there is no obvious causal relationship
between noise levels and, for example, graffiti or litter.
April 2004
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