Builders merchant next door - desperate for advice

[LoveGherkins]

To cut long story short, our house is next to builder merchants. It was fine last year but this year it is becoming unbearable noise wise.

They start deliveries to the car park at 5:30AM in the morning (reversing trucks and fork lifters moving stuff into the storage). And it goes on till about 4-4:30 in the evening

I made complain to council noise team. They said they are allowed to do this. I don't understand how? Maybe yes for deliveries but not start zooming with fork lifters this early.

When planning application was submitted my impression was they will operate from their site rather than car park next to them (they share the car park with cafe). I think they own car park so they just keep their actual site as a storage and all the moving of goods, prepping goods for delivery trucks are happening in the car park.

I'm at

Sorry didn't finish. I'm desperate now because the council just can't be bothered dealing with me and the noise is becoming unbearable. My only hope is that they can't operate from the car park and need to operate from the actual site. This year they turned it into a distribution center rather than just a shop.

Any advise how to deal with this situayand make council act would be much appreciated💐💐

Look on the planning portal and find out what their planning conditions actually are. Go back to Council and ask Environmental Health team to assess for noise nuisance.

Sadly I think complaining to the council is the way to go.
Can you look at their planning application and see if there were any conditions, sometimes there is a limit on operating hours.
Complain to planning enforcement if there is a breach or perhaps if they are using the car park for other purposes.
Also complain to environmental health regarding noise.
Would be worth contacting your local Councillor as the council will probably take an email from them more seriously.

We had noise from a commercial property once. We'd complain but nothing would change.

I looked up the original planning application and the conditions of their planning consent. In this case it stated no audible noise outside the property.

We emailed head office with this info, and stated they were in breach of planning and we'd inform on them if it didn't immediately improve. As if by magic it improved, they even reschedule their deliveries from middle of the night to middle of the day.

So that would be my suggestion, look up the planning and see if there is anything useful in that.

When it comes to noise councils are as good as useless. They will fob you off with an easy answer. We're battling with our council to get dog noise recognised and I am emailing my point of contact repeatedly as she is very relaxed about replying. Record (by paper) all noises, start/finish times, impact on you and where you were when you heard it etc. Bully for recording machines to be installed by the council in your home. Keep pushing. Yes to PPs contacting Environmental Health and local councillor(s). You might end up having to go the legal route for an injunction and could get compensated - that's a long process, though, and you will need to be careful with fees etc. Citizens Advice could also be helpful. Make yourself as annoying as possible so they deal with the issue.

They normally restrict delivery times in residential areas if it is causing a noise nuisance, so keep on at the council.

Please speak with your local Councillor about this - if you've got a good one, they'll do what they can to help.

Also, check the planning restrictions - this should be available to see online and for a commercial site in a residential area there should be hours of operation listed.

Thank you all so much and sorry about being late to respond. Was away last week getting married, back to normal life now 😁

@Runnerduck34 & @rightonthyme - very detailed responses. I made a list of all channels mentioned here and start contacting. I always think that a lot can be achieved with determination. Would not like to go the legal way but let's see.

Also reading struggles of others makes me feel less alone!

I analysed the planning application and it is pretty obvious that what they doing is against the planning permission. Also noise assessment states that if they stick to the conditions none of the noises would happen. What is strange they said that they did noise assessment on our property. Not sure how this has happened but we never gave a permission for that.

Analysed the documents available online and tomorrow will start putting together an email to councillor. Our council is well known for being corrupt so ready for a long battle 😓