A WOMAN who made her neighbours’ lives a misery by playing loud music repeatedly has had her equipment confiscated by officers from Leicester City Council’s noise and pollution control team.
Residents had complained to officers about very loud music being played from a flat at West Court, in West Walk, off Princess Road East, with the windows wide open, during the coronavirus lockdown.
Complaints first started coming in during March, with neighbours reporting unacceptable noise from amplified music coming from the flat during the day, at night and into the early hours of the morning.
Officers witnessed four noise nuisances that could be clearly heard in the street between September 26 and October 23, but when an informal warning letter, followed by a statutory notice, failed to stop the noise, officers were left with no choice but to take enforcement action.
Leicester Magistrates Court granted the noise and pollution control team a warrant to enter the premises and remove the equipment responsible. The seizure was carried out on November 2, with the assistance of Leicestershire Police.
However, the tenant smashed a DVD player and Bluetooth speaker involved the noise nuisances before officers could confiscate them.
Leicester City Council’s noise and pollution control team manager Annette Bryan said: “Officers tried to deal with this matter informally but the tenant did not respond to any of the documents she was sent and the noise issue escalated.
“The seizure of her equipment was therefore deemed necessary as the complainants were unable to escape the noise.
“People can pay to retrieve their seized equipment after a month, but in this instance the tenant destroyed it before allowing us to confiscate it. However any further reports of noise nuisance could mean more noise equipment has to be removed from the flat.’’
Leicester assistant city mayor for neighbourhoods, Cllr Kirk Master, added: “No one should have to put up with a noise nuisance like this, especially during lockdown when people were spending more time than ever at home.
“We take enforcement action only when other means of resolving the problem have failed. In this instance, the tenant ignored our earlier attempts to deal with the problem informally so we were left with no other choice.”
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