From anger over loud music and rowdy parties to complaints about crowing cockerels and persistent dog barking - thousands of people every year contact their council frustrated about noise.

Grievances over doors slamming, loud televisions or babies crying are among the gripes Kent’s local authorities have logged in the last 18 months. So what nuisance noises have been angering you or your neighbours?

“Love thy neighbour”, so says the biblical phrase - yet for thousands of households each year the noise and disturbance coming from next door drives them to pick up their phone and complain.

Keeping control of the volume levels is mostly the job of local authorities whose responsibility it is to log complaints and investigate the disturbances that may be getting out of hand.

In short this is, suggests the government, typically a noise injuring - or likely to injure - someone’s health or is “unreasonably and substantially” interfering with their ability to use or enjoy their home, garden or other such area.

Close to 9,000 noise complaints were received by Kent’s councils last year - and 4,000 more between January and August this year.

But mixed with the predictable and understandable anger over loud late-night roadworks, unrelenting parties or the sounds of continuous alarms - are some perhaps more surprising entries in the logs.

Kent’s complaints

Loud music and parties account for hundreds of the noise complaints fired-off in Kent each year.

Gravesham council took 152 complaints last year, in Dartford 245 cases complained about music and 163 in Tunbridge Wells.

Student hotspot Canterbury also received 193 reports among its 1,087 noise complaints in 2023 but spokesman Rob Davies says in the majority of cases, events will likely be a one-off.

He explained: "Many complaints relating to loud parties will be for one-off or infrequent events at private houses but for an ongoing noise problem we will start by issuing diary sheets to the complainant.

"If these yield sufficient information to show there may be an issue to resolve, we will install equipment to record the noise.

”This will then tell us if a statutory nuisance exists, which in short means the nuisance is interfering with someone's personal comfort or enjoyment.

“We will try to resolve this by speaking to the person causing the noise where possible, but in the more difficult cases we can serve notices requiring the activity to cease, or even seize equipment."

Canterbury landlord John Hinsley and his pub The Grove Ferry Inn was forced to pull the plug on beer garden gigs last year after a complaint about loud music.

Mr Hinsley went away with brewer Shepherd Neame to search for a solution to enable gigs in the 500-capacity outdoor space to resume.

And just last month, proposals for a three-sided enclosed wooden stage that will deflect sound away from neighbours, were approved by the council leaving John to breathe a sigh of relief after what he estimates was £20,000 in lost income.

“We have been holding some gigs in a marquee but are absolutely thrilled the stage has been approved because it will make a huge difference” he said in August following the decision.

Animal noises

Perry Sutton from Boughton-under-Blean was ordered to pay compensation in 2023 because dogs on his property barked all day.

Mr Sutton, who was convicted in his absence by Medway magistrates last September, was fined £250, ordered to pay a £100 victim surcharge, £100 compensation to a neighbour, and £800 in costs.

The case was pursued by Swale council after five breaches of a previous noise abatement order.

Speaking at the time the 59-year-old - who insisted he hadn’t known about the date of the hearing - said he would be appealing.

But frequent or persistent dog barking results in hundreds of complaints to councils every year according to the figures given to Kentonline.

Medway Council received 217 complaints last year about barking dogs while in Dartford residents complained on more than 200 occasions.

In Sevenoaks, frustrated neighbours logged 89 reports of frequent dog noise, in Gravesham 75 and in Canterbury the figure was 141.

In Thanet, 121 complaints have already been received by the council this year.

But like the animals themselves - animal noise complaints come in all shapes and sizes, and are not just limited to moans about man’s best friend.

Fed-up residents in Dartford, Ashford and Swale have lodged numerous frustrations about the noise of other animals over the course of the last 18 months.

Gripes about cockerels, chickens and parrots number 16 in Swale already this year and amounted to 28 in 2023.

Cockerels, chickens and pigeons have also been disturbing Dartford residents where officers took six complaints last year and have already dealt with seven between January and August 2024.

Raucous rats and foxes on an allotment are also in the district’s book.

Pigeons, ducks, cockerels and chickens have found themselves the target of 11 noise complaints across Ashford in 2023 alongside 94 the council took about barking dogs while Folkestone and Hythe taxpayers also contacted their council about the noise from “birds and other animals” disturbing them.

In Dover, 41 complaints were made between June to September this year alone about the noise from dogs, birds and other animals.

Noisy geese and cockerels were at the centre of a long legal battle between an animal charity and a council that was eventually dropped in March last year.

Amey James, who runs The Happy Pants Ranch, off Iwade Road, in Bobbing, near Sittingbourne, had been contesting Swale council for the previous two years over an animal noise abatement order after issues first arose in 2021.

But after much deliberation with legal teams, Amey chose to withdraw her appeal last March when, in an agreement with the council, it too agreed to reduce the charge to just one of the animals making too much noise.

Amey says she never dreamt the charity’s vast 20-acre site would see them upset others with sounds of the countryside.

In previous years councils, particularly in parts of inner city London, would call on the charity to help rescue and rehome noisy animals found in unsuitable spaces.

While Amey also recalls having once given a home to poultry discovered in a Herne Bay flat.

“If I was in the middle of London or in the middle of a housing estate I could understand it,” she said.

“I thought where we are - annoying (other) humans would not be a concern or something we’d have to worry about.”

But it’s not just animal noises that attract complaints from those living close to Kent’s open spaces.

In Thanet disturbance caused by a bird scarer - which farmers use at particular times of the year to protect their crops - prompted a complaint to the council while noise from clay pigeon shooting, also angered one taxpayer in Dartford.

‘A major shift in tolerance levels’

Charity ASB Help offers advice to victims experiencing all forms of anti-social behaviour.

But almost 40% of inquiries received include some element of a noise complaint - with some truly heartbreaking cases of neighbours living with persistent disturbance affecting everything from their physical to mental health.

However deputy CEO Charlie Hamilton-Kay says society’s tolerance levels to neighbourhood noise since the pandemic has also undergone a noticeable shift with people as a whole now far less tolerant when it comes to many everyday noises.

She explained: “Since the Covid pandemic, living in each other’s pockets, the tolerance for each other has dropped off a cliff. There’s been a major shift in tolerance levels.”

Tunbridge Wells and Maidstone are among the councils to to have received complaints from people about babies and children crying and the noise of children playing outside.

“Children playing on trampolines - that’s such a big complaint” confirmed Charlie.

“When we look at that behaviour we have to ask is that reasonable? It absolutely is. They should absolutely be doing that.

“People feel it’s disturbing their quiet enjoyment of their home - but it’s not wrong.

“Music ‘till midnight? Yes that’s unreasonable.”

‘The normal sounds of domestic occupation’

Doors being closed, footsteps, toilets flushing and the noise of household appliances are among the gripes that Ashford council makes clear it is likely to have little control over - despite receiving several complaints annually relating to every day living.

The volume of people’s televisions prompted four complaints to the borough council In 2023 while it also logged a further seven about banging doors among the 401 it received.

However in a guide on its website, Ashford council says the “normal sounds of domestic occupation” are usually beyond its remit, alongside noise that occurs “very occasionally” or is short lived.

Elsewhere in Kent upset over the use of power tools, jet washers, gardening equipment and the noise from DIY projects also feature in complaint logs.

In Canterbury, these numbered 23 last year and 13 in Gravesham, while 26 cases in Medway and 10 incidents in Tunbridge Wells related to noise from people building, repairing and decorating.

The “fishbowl” effect of lockdown, through which people became “acutely aware” of other people’s behaviour and movements has - suggests Charlie Hamilton-Kay - become a key part of the reason why certain sounds may now grate more than usual or seemingly get on people’s nerves far more easily.

But she explains there is a significant difference - when looking at complaints - between the very worst and harmful noise complaints people can experience and those which are annoying but do not necessarily involve someone else doing something wrong.

And sometimes the work of staff at ASB Help is about helping people separate the two.

“Do we have unreasonable expectation sometimes?” she pondered.

“It’s having that conversation with people and managing expectations.

“It’s annoying, yes. But is it harmful?”