HARLOW Council’s Environmental Health and Legal teams have once again successfully prosecuted an individual for noise nuisance over excessively loud dance music being played from their home.

A number of complaints had been received from residents in the Arkwrights area, which led to an investigation by environmental health officers. They themselves witnessed the excessive, bass-heavy noise coming from the home of Laura Featley and, as she was in breach of a previously issued noise abatement notice, legal proceedings were prepared.

Whilst this was ongoing the council continued to receive recordings of the noise – one report stated that the excessive noise had lasted for six-and-a-half hours in one instance.

Once legal proceedings had been issued by the council’s Legal team, the matter was dealt with via the Single Justice Procedure (SJP), which is used for minor criminal offences and meant there was no physical hearing. The court found Miss Featley guilty of breaching the noise abatement notice and issued a fine of £220, as well as a £44 victim surcharge and costs of £293.17 (being the legal costs and the costs of the Environmental Health team’s investigation), meaning she must pay £557.17.

Commenting on the case, Councillor Alastair Gunn, portfolio holder for environment, said: “This is an excellent result for the council in dealing with someone who has continued to make their neighbours’ lives difficult through excessive noise. It will have been highly stressful for them to have to put up with the noise at the extreme levels and for the durations we are talking about here – that the resident continued to subject her neighbours to nuisance noise even after being issued with an abatement notice is just unacceptable.

“I want to give thanks to the Environmental Health and Legal teams who have, once again, partnered up to bring a successful conclusion to this case. We want Harlow to be an enjoyable town in which to live and for our residents to respect one another – however, we will not hesitate to act when a nuisance is being caused which affects their quality of life.”

You can report nuisance noise of various types to the council at www.harlow.gov.uk/noise

http://www.harlow.gov.uk/noise