THE NOISE PAGES

Bulletin No. 4, January 2019

From Andrew Waller

 

Happy New Year, everyone. Let’s hope it’s relatively quiet! The subscriber list for this newsletter is now up to 180—thank you for your interest and support.

 

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In this edition, I report on the first-term complaints statistics presented by the University of Bristol, as well as an analysis of the incident reports collated (with your help) on The Noise Pages itself. I also explain why I’ve removed house numbers from the incident reports and instead transferred them into an offline database. Looking forward, I also discuss the areas where progress might be made in getting student noise under control—and what you can do to help. Read on!

Remember this? It’s a house in Collingwood Road where a very large party was held in March—one of two events that prompted me to set up the website. Well, in November it was back in residents’ bad books after a smaller but still noisy affair, one of several involving this year’s tenants. So, this is a case where I believe we should be urging the landlord to tighten up his supervision of the house, as required by law. Any owner can be unlucky to get a noisy crew one year. But in consecutive years? That starts to look like carelessness. The question is how best to organise a response. See my comments lower down.

Noise by Numbers

 

  • University of Bristol released its end-of-term tally of complaints against students—on noise, parties, waste and other issues—in December. So far as noise is concerned, the report is best summed up by the chart at the link below: There were fewer parties but more noise complaints of other kinds, so overall not much change. (Previous first-term reports have shown increases, so perhaps we should be grateful it wasn’t worse.) I’ve posted a full report on the numbers here.
     
  • The Christmas break gave me time to analyse the incident reports published on The Noise Pages over the same period. (Thanks to all those who contributed—we all hope not to suffer further disturbance but if it happens, send in the details!) Our numbers can’t be compared directly with the university’s, for a variety of reasons. One is that a few of our reports concern students with the University of the West of England, rather than UoB. However, there were 53 reports in total, of events big and small. That’s quite a lot of noise in a relatively small area mostly limited to Redland, with a particular focus on Chandos Road and adjacent streets. My report is here.

I’m very happy to receive suggestions about what is or isn't on the website, directions to take, or simply articles for publication. Anyone who wants to help is welcome to get in touch with me at thenoisepages@gmail.com

The Vexed Question of House Numbers

 

Some time in October, a student posted on a gossip site that her house had been broken into a couple of weeks after it was cited on The Noise Pages. She acknowledged she couldn’t say this was cause and effect, but proceeded to imply it was, anyway.

 

As you might imagine, this story took off. Over the following weeks other students made similar claims and I was asked about it every time I was interviewed by student journalists. (The Noise Pages was getting lots of attention, as detailed here.)

 

My initial response, after checking with the police, was to point out there was no actual evidence to support this conjecture, and note that student properties have long been a target for thieves. Nevertheless, I was concerned. Facts matter little these days, and I could see the story could be damaging. (The more so if it turned out to be true—a theoretical risk.)

 

Clearly, the student community was reworking the narrative, with themselves as victims. This threatened to block our message—that students need to rethink their behaviour and stop keeping people awake. So by December I had pretty much decided to let the air out of this balloon by removing the house numbers during the Christmas break. (I knew it would take a while to do.)

 

The topic surfaced at the UoB community liaison meeting, where I gave a talk about the website at the university’s invitation. One resident and a student took the alarmist view. Other residents offered their support after the meeting—two were strongly in favour of keeping the house numbers, as I know some subscribers are.

 

A few days later came the final straw. The Bristol Post’s website, without any request to me for comment, copied-and-pasted an article from The Tab student newspaper under a juicier headline. I decided to bite the bullet and make the change.

 

In practice, omitting house numbers from reports makes very little difference. There will still be enough information for readers to recognise an event in their street and contribute comments if they wish. (Actually, most comments come before publication or in response to my flyers.) And I’m retaining the house numbers in an offline database so I can identify HMOs where there are serial problems, as noted above. That was, in fact, the original reason for having the house numbers.

 

Final point: Valuable as it is to document noise, the reporting effort doesn’t directly change anything on the ground. Rather, it provides useful information to support the efforts that hopefully will secure change, as described below.

Where Will Change Come From?

 

Students: In a perfect world, they would recognise their behaviour is unacceptable and rein it in. But there’s no easy way to engineer that. The Noise Pages has certainly put “noise” into the student conversation and I’ve given half-a-dozen interviews to student journalists. I may put material on the website aimed directly at students. If anyone sees a way to convene a more direct conversation, let me know!

 

The university: UoB is sensitive to public opinion, so the website helps keep up pressure. We await a decision on a proposal from Chandos Neighbourhood Association that UoB pay for night-time policing. In the meantime, the university is piloting its new disciplinary response: a mix of fines and an option to send students on an anti-social behaviour awareness course, for which they pay £50 each. So far, 12 households have been sent on the course; three got £100 fines as well. Seven other households have appealed against penalties—seemingly a new development. The complaints statistics show fewer parties this past term. Are the new measures biting? Unclear.

 

The council: Still largely MIA on noise, as far as I can see. I will make a renewed effort to discuss the issues with Neighbourhood Enforcement. Residents who’ve used the council’s online noise-reporting page have had mixed experiences. One has been asked to collect evidence using a phone-based noise app, so I will be interested to see how well that works in practice.

 

The police: Slightly more promising. I met our new neighbourhood inspector, Lorna Dallimore, at a residents’ meeting in late November and followed up with an email flagging my questions about use of anti-ASB powers. I provided some information I obtained from Durham Police, which she promised to look into. So I hope to follow up on that. We’ve also had more email contact with the local beat team than previously, and they have visited some problem houses.

 

Landlords: A key group, which flies under the radar. The noise takes place in their properties. As HMO licensees, they have relevant legal duties. We should be reminding them of that and, if necessary, referring inadequate responses to their regulators, the council’s Private Housing team.

 

Who will do this? I’ve explained on the website how to get landlord’s addresses. And I can provide draft letters. However, it’s a bit more work than writing a complaint email to the university, so if the onus rests on individual residents, it may not be done. I myself could write, as The Noise Pages, but I have no official standing.

 

I think the best solution would be for local residents’ groups to take this on as a collective response. Ideally, landlords would be contacted at the same time as the university. But we could start by writing to the seven landlords whose properties have shown up twice, or more, in the current incident list. Any takers?

What you can do:

 

  • Keep emailing me your incident reports when noise problems occur.
     
  • Ask your neighbours to subscribe so this newsletter list keeps growing.
     
  • Let me know which street you live in (number not necessary), so I have a network I can tap by email if I seek information about a noise event.
     
  • I’d be interested in forming a supporters’ group of a dozen or so people prepared to be identified with (and maybe on) the website so that it’s more obvious this is a community effort and not just (as I’m sure most students think) one cranky guy in Redland.
     
  • Send me your suggestions, or your view on anything written (or omitted) here.

 

Thanks for reading. ‘Bye for now, Andrew

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