The allotment can not be relied on as a place of tranquility

Lewes Road, Brighton

When Audrey Sharma, an environmental health officer from Brighton and Hove Council wrote to me about strimming noise she couldn't have been clearer about its right to exist, in a legal sort of way.

Audrey bends over backwards to defend the owners of the enormous cemetery stretching from my house to my allotment.

"The cemetery has been operating in this area for over 100 years and anyone moving to the area would have known this and could reasonably expect to hear grass cutting to go on....."

Audrey wrote to me not because I wrote to her, but because I wrote to local councillors about the fact that the cemetery planned to strim every working day during the summer, all day. They told me so because I am apparently the only person who has ever complained about it.

Hell - Torcello

The councillors perhaps thought it was a matter for environmental health. Apparently not. Nor was the allotment officer interested, despite the fact that at least one woman on the same allotment now can't go during the week in summer because she is so affected by the noise.

Back to Audrey's reply, which is hard to follow in places because of grammar, non-sequiturs, cutting and pasting of legal documents.

"You do not own or ‘occupy’ you’re an allotment and I am not able to consider whether noise arising on a council owned allotment is a statutory noise nuisance, as the purpose of this use is growing fruit and vegetables or flowers and allotment activities are leisure activities of choice.

"Whilst I realise you want to partly rent the allotment for peace, this is not it’s primary use. Noisy machines are routinely used on the allotments; council staff carry out strimming of vacant plots from time to time, use chain saws on trees for up to 4hrs at a time, and so on.

"Allotment users also reasonably use various noisy garden equipment (there is roughly one complaint from near neighbours per month about noise from the allotment).  Formal steps can and are taken where users are unreasonable e.g.using powered equiment before 7am. The allotment can therefore not be relied on as a place of tranquility."

That last line is the kind of statement I hope will come back to haunt the abandoned plots. In that sentence and this context, allotment and cemetery are interchangeable.

I expect noise on Lewes Road, noise from storms over the sea and Downs, from playgrounds, farms, factories and building sites. But the trouble with Audrey's acceptance of noise is that it is detached from quality of life and in her terms, merely another legal issue.

An acquaintance will have to endure noise on a neighbouring site for the next six years. They're building a leisure centre. A friend in a basement flat has noise from both sides, above and in the walled gardens. When one neighbour stops, another starts. In my stretch of street, a sunny Saturday is a signal for at least three petrol powered strimmers, hedge trimmers or electric saws. On working days it's open season.

When I moved to my house, the cemetery didn't use strimmers. They brought them in 10 years ago and even then, the noise wasn't at the level it's at now. They use the cheapest contractors who don't train operators, so the grass is strimmed down to dust while the guy holding the strimmer listens to music. They strim even where there are no graves.

Noise pollution affects animals and plants as well as humans. The humans it affects tend to be those of us who are poorer and can't buy the silence of the suburbs or countryside, although even that is no longer a given. In the UK national park authorities are allowing off road four wheel drives to rip through the silence of the wilderness for £200 a day and I'll bet someone's making money from jet skiers roaring at the beach.

What is not quoted is the right to quiet.

Has it, with the right to a view and the right to light, become another legal concept rather than one in which we can talk about quality of life?

Silence regenerates the brain and the older you are, the more difficult it is for you to filter out noise. I live in a city by choice. I love the energy of it. But can we have a discussion about noise and who's most affected by it that doesn't start with the right of all machines and operators never to be checked?