Noisy Construction Nextdoor

[Emmanuell]

I live in a flat in a townhouse in London. The terrace is on all sides of a rectangle with gardens in the middle. If that makes sense?
I have lived in this flat for several years, including when the basement flat was being extended.

Two doors down the terrace, the basement flat is having a large extension built over about half of their garden. It has been under construction since April. We didn’t receive notice but that is normal. The planning shows they failed to inform the immediate neighbours too.

The builders arrive on site around 07:30 and bang around. Then at 08:00 on the dot they start with the angle grinder and all sorts of other very loud tools. It’s constant. All day. Every day. The weekend they do the same but start a bit later. They’ve been in on Saturdays and Sundays. It is driving all of the neighbours insane. I have heard several screaming matches between flat owners and the builders about the noise.

equally, I understand it has to get done. but the level and consistent early starts means no one gets to sleep properly. We haven’t used our balconies or gardens all summer as it’s just horrible high pitched screaching of machinery.

Is there point complaining? Or should we just leave it and hope it finishes sooner. It has really spoilt the summer living here. We accept that living in central london there will be noise, but never to this level.

Your local council will have guidelines on their website for times/days that construction work is allowed. Sunday usually isn't but check. It may also show on the application-granted notice from their planning application which will be on the planning portal.

I had something similar - not Sundays, but 6 days a week, long days of it for about 4 months or so. It was during lockdown and I was working from home (I had to a lot of presentations and meetings via Teams at the time and could barely think straight) so couldn't escape at all. To make matters worse, I suffer from an anxiety condition that is triggered by noise...

It's an absolute nightmare, so I sympathise totally. I don't think you can do much about the early starts, but almost certainly the Sunday working will be against the rules. Possibly it might be easier for you if the work went on longer but at least you had the certainty of one day a week that you could expect peace and quiet, so this may be worth pursuing.

My tips... Sleep in ear plugs to avoid being woken by noise in the morning, and buy some top of the range noise-cancelling headphones. I found that if I played music at the same time as a sound app with a combination of nature sounds and brown noise, it was very effective at drowning it out. I still had noise in my head all day of course, but at least it was of my own choosing. If the anxiety gets too bad, speak to your GP - I was prescribed medication, which did help a lot.

I hope it all comes to an end soon and you can get back to a normal life.

As PPs say, check your local council's guidelines for rules on noisy construction works. I'd say 8am start on weekdays is, unfortunately, standard. But most likely a later start and an earlier finish (e.g. 9am-1pm) might be prescirbied for Saturdays and no building noise on Sundays or Bank Holidays (DIY stuff may still be allowed). If the builders are breaking those rules, complain to the council. Obviously, the outcome will depend on the coucil, but a few years ago we had to complain about noise at the office-to-flats conversion next door and it helped.

I definitely wouldn't advise getting together with all your neighbours to arrange to play a variety of very obnoxious techno and house music from every flat that's not theirs for every quiet moment that is legally permissible within legal decibel limits until they get the bloody message.

That would be an awful thing to do OP, so definitely don't do that.

Or maybe someone's dog might keep running away in the garden at 3am on most workdays and only a shrill training whistle will bring him back. When a dog's gotta pee, a dog's gotta pee.