Freedom of information response

Q1. How many complaints for noise nuisance have you had in your council area over the past three years? Please provide a figure for each year (i.e. 2023 so far, 2022 and 2021).

In issuing our response the council have applied S12 of the Freedom of Information Act. 

This means that the council does not have to comply with your request if the cost of doing so exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’, which for local authorities is 18 hours.  This applies to the time taken spent locating and collating the requested information.

Almost all noise nuisance cases received into the Complaints team at the council are dealt with as Service requests, with the following link provided to report the noise nuisance Pollution or noise report - Thurrock Council

Due to the large numbers of noise service requests made to the council each day these are all logged under one category of noise. We wouldn’t be able to break these down further without interrogation of each case which would take in excess of 18 hours.

However, we can provide the requested total NOISE complaints recorded by the Environmental protection team to give you an idea of the numbers involved: -

• 2020/21     -        1461
• 2021/22     -        1609
• 2022/23     -        1557

If you wish to narrow the scope of your request and resubmit this to the council then of course we may be able to provide this information.

Q2. How many of these complaints are for road noise, i.e. noise caused by driving, traffic, etc? Please provide a figure for each year as outlined in Q1.

Please see answer to Q1.

Q3. Please can you provide the top 10 streets/roads for the greatest number of road noise complaints relating to Q2, with the number of complaints for each street/road in the top 10? Please can we also have these figures per year as outlined in Q1.

Please see answer to Q1.

Q4. Please can you provide the top 10 streets/road for the greatest number of noise nuisance complaints overall, with the number of complaints for each street/road in the top 10? Please can we also have these figures per year as outlined in Q1.

Please see answer to Q1.

Q5. Please can you provide the figures for the number all noise nuisance complaints, broken down by type of complaint (in the way it’s recorded), e.g. noisy pubs, building work, dogs, parties, etc), also for each year as outlined in Q1.

Please see answer to Q1.