Latest news with #noiseabatement
Telegraph
4 days ago
- General
- Telegraph
Family fear losing pet cockerels after one noise complaint
A family have said they fear losing their cockerels because of a single noise anonymous Facebook complaint. Paul and Kirstie Haylor have been handed a noise abatement notice over their pets, Salty and Pepper. The couple said they could be forced to re home or put down the pair, which they claimed would be traumatic for their autistic sons who love the animals. Mr and Mrs Haylor, from the Isle of Wight village of Havenstreet, said the process had been 'farcical' and asked where you could keep cockerels if not in the countryside. The problems began with an anonymous 'sarcastic comment' on the village Facebook group asking if anyone was woken by the birds' distinctive call. Despite their immediate neighbours reassuring them that the pets were not an issue, an Environmental Health investigation was opened by the local council. The couple, who breed rare chickens, claim they were promised a meeting with the officer who installed sound monitoring equipment in their flat – but this never materialised and they were instead handed an abatement notice. Now, if they are unable to stop or reduce the animal noise they may face further penalties and even prosecution. Mrs Hayler has criticised the coalition-run Isle of Wight council for their 'black and white' process which doesn't adequately cover their situation. She said: 'It all started with an anonymous post on the Havenstreet community Facebook group, a sarcastic comment asking if anyone was bothered by the sound of cockerels waking them up in the morning. Everybody who replied said no.' Once the Environmental Health investigation was opened sound monitoring equipment was installed in the family's flat to record the noise levels and they felt 'reassured' by the process. '[The officer] told us he would be back in touch to advise us on what we could do, so we were kind of reassured at that point,' she continued. 'Then we received various letters. He invited us to meet up, and to reply within ten days, which we did, and the next thing we knew, an abatement notice was posted through our door. 'We don't understand why that step of meeting up was missed, and we've been going back and forth since... It's all become a bit farcical. I've tried to be sympathetic, and we're willing to make changes.' Mrs Hayler added that there would be outrage if someone suggested putting a noisy dog to sleep. She said: 'It's very black and white, and there doesn't seem to be any room for other considerations, like the fact that we live rurally, and the fact that they're children's pets. 'It's all very clinical. There's no human touch to it... We've had them since we moved here, seven years. 'Our eldest chicken died last weekend, and I cried and cried, she was such a fab chicken. They're our pets, and our two autistic sons are really attached to them.' The Isle of Wight Council declined to comment while the investigation is ongoing.
Telegraph
11-06-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Don't let a vocal minority silence Britain's ancient church bells
There used to be a tradition that ringing church bells would drive out evil spirits. Now it's the bells that are being driven out. The latest set of chimes to fall foul of complainers are in Mytholmroyd. It's a small West Yorkshire village, best known as the birthplace of Ted Hughes. Perhaps it was the bells of St Michael's Church that inspired the late Poet Laureate to write in one of his rhymes for children about a bell's 'clang of mumbling boom'. But that clang was far from mumbling for three residents who said they were being kept awake all night by the chimes, ringing every 15 minutes. A noise abatement order imposed on the bells means they now can't be rung at all, so for the first time in 100 years they have fallen silent. There have been similar ding dongs over church bells elsewhere in the past few years: in both Witheridge and Kenton in Devon, in Helpringham in Lincolnshire, and in Beith in Ayrshire, usually by people saying that chimes through the night in these rural neighbourhoods are ruining their sleep. As someone who lives in a city, used to police helicopters overhead, ice cream vans blaring their tinny tunes, trains rattling past, and crowds of students staggering home at night under the influence of numerous intoxicants, I have to say I do find the noise of the countryside rather disturbing. Here in the city, these noises are part of a constant soundscape. In the country, there is an enveloping silence, but then you will be jolted into wakefulness by a cockerel's piercing crow, or a huge piece of farm machinery rattling past, or a herd of cattle lowing their way to milking. But a church bell chime, surely, is in a minor key compared to these other rural interruptions? For me the sound of bells is, well, music to my ears. Despite the planes flying into Heathrow over my head and the police sirens blaring outside my door, I can still hear the sound of a bell nearby, which rings regularly to mark Divine Office being said in a local monastery as well as the Angelus at noon. On Sundays, a peal of bells sounds out at a nearby church, and on weekday evenings too you can hear the ringing, as the tower captain and his team practise Plain Bob Major or Grandsire Triples or one of those other extraordinary mathematical formulas, known as changes, that make up bell-ringing. But the kind of change we don't want is something so quintessentially English as bell-ringing to disappear because after a few people make a fuss, officialdom steps in. The bells of Mytholmroyd were silenced when just three people objected – but the 1,200 residents who wanted the chimes to continue had their petition ignored. It's a growing pattern: a few complaints put an end to chimes that had been loved by communities for generations. Yet there's more at stake here than bells. It sounds a death-knell for our tradition of going with what the majority want.
