Anyone had any noise complaints from milling?

[chopperpete]

Have a look at your local Council's website to see how they investigate complaints/general advice, may help you...Generally, Council's allow businesses to operate as long as you don't go too late or Saturday afternoon/ Sundays....be nice to your council officer if he visits and make out your neighbour is being unreasonable...

[muttley9050]

If your mill has an hour clock on it, it can be useful to recOrd how much it is actually in use.

This can help you if the council do get involved. However if you use it all the time then ignore this.

My dad has a small small holding and the council were asked to investigate noise complaints from his compact tractor. Turns out he'd owned the tractor about 18 months. And only 35 hours had been added to the clock since purchase. This helped my dad prove that his neighbour was an unreasonable arse.

[Mike Dempsey]

my first business workshop was on a small industrial estate that had been there for 50 years. There were a few factories that had shut down about 100m away and they built posh houses on them. I phoned up the planning department of the council to query why they had let them build houses there and they said there had been a change of use for that part of the estate. There was a council bin lorry yard in between the houses and our small units which went up for sale. If it was sold they had given it outline planning permission for more houses. I queried this with the planning officer who said if they put houses there and someone makes a complaint about noise they would enforce noise regulations. I only used a chainsaw occasionally there but used all sorts of woodworking machinery up to ten at night and sometimes through the night if I had an urgent order to complete. I had to move workshops to a bigger industrial estate to get away from this possibility and now can make as much noise as I like whenever I like because its all factories and garage workshops surrounding me.

It still annoys me though that one part of the council can help the other part by changing the designated use without any consultation to nearby users. The yard is still sitting empty and unsold and puts a smile on my face every time I see it. The area where they first built the houses is also known as Bin Lorry Lane instead of the posh name they gave it originally which probably wont do the house prices much good.

[donnk]

cooperation is always preferable to confrontation. He may be a silly old duffer city slicker but he does have an axe to grind and you will find as the cuaser of the noise/nuisance you will have the council on hi side.

 

If you can show you have tried a few things to reduce the noise it will go a long way.

 

My trade is building and believe me we have loads of complaints when we build a house as who wants a building site next door! I always try to be polite and reasonable even id they are not which is 90%. I'm on first name terms with all the environmental health team (noise / dust). It's a case of managing the complainers expectations and if the council can go back to them and say we got the builder to do X then they are happy. Even if the X is nothing, which it is most of the time!

 

Have to play the game.