Can we complain about noise from neighbour’s soccer events?

My wife and I are dreading the Euro 2024 football tournament as our neighbours will watch most of the games in their conservatory – a part of the house which seems to amplify noise.

It’ll mean weeks of misery for us.

Often, they have people over watching evening games and it’s just not soundproof at all, with the noise of TV speakers and shouting and cheering going right through us.

For this reason, we really hope England don’t make the final.

And the noise doesn’t end at full-time – they’ll carry on making a racket until the early hours.

We’re on good terms with them, but when we’ve brought this up in the past they’ll say: ‘Sorry, we’ll keep the noise down’ – but it never happens.

What do we do next? Can we put in an anonymous noise complaint with the authorities they’ll take seriously, but not destroy neighbourly relations?

Jane Denton replies: With the Euro 2024 football tournament having just started and the Wimbledon tennis championships and Paris 2024 Olympic Games just around the corner, this summer has a slew of delights on offer for sports fans. 

However, watching sporting action in a pub, bar or restaurant can be a costly business for consumers. 

Figures published by the Office for National Statistics in May revealed that the average price of a pint across the UK increased by 4.6 per cent to £4.75 in the year to April.  Many punters, particularly in locations like London, pay significantly more. 

Lots of pubs and bars are requiring punters to put down a deposit and make a time-limited booking for a table during the Euro 2024 football tournament. 

With all this is mind, many people, including your neighbours, host their own football-watching parties at home. 

Invariably, such events often spark tensions between neighbours, particularly if the party is not just a one-off and regularly spills over into the early hours of the morning. 

Let’s speak to two experts, the boss of an acoustic consultancy and a solicitor, to establish how best to resolve your noise woes and determine if a complaint to the council is the best course of action. 

Ed Clarke, managing director of  Clarke Saunders Acoustics in Winchester, says: We live on a small island, that sometimes feels like it’s getting smaller – population density is increasing, and perhaps our expectations for peace and quiet are on the up, while on the other side of the party wall, consideration for the neighbours is declining.

I encounter many situations which are more about societal interaction than acoustic wave theory and which require more diplomacy and expectation management than complex manipulation of decibels.

Controlling neighbour noise is fundamentally a question of reasonableness, both in practical terms and in the legal application of nuisance legislation. 

The hope is that when reasonable expectations are coupled with reasonable behaviour, although this might involve some compromise, a reasonable outcome is achieved and we can all rub along.

This can break down of course, when sound insulation is incredibly poor, such that even subdued citizens, living very normally, are disturbing their tolerant neighbours. 

When we consider reasonable levels of noisy neighbour activity, fireworks in early November and New Year’s Day tend to be accepted as exceptions to the day-to-day status quo, plus the odd birthday party from time to time. 

Raucous high living of this nature would be unreasonable, indeed actionable, if repeated in the day-to-day. 

But spread over the calendar year this can represent an appropriate balance of give and take.

Euro 2024 will last for one month, during which England will definitely play three group stage matches and up to four knock-out games, many of which are a relatively late kick-off. 

My professional view is that reasonable neighbours might think twice about having ‘watch parties’ for all seven games, especially if they know the sound insulation isn’t great between them and next door. 

Likewise though, if there’s somewhere else in your house that the sound from the conservatory TV doesn’t permeate so badly, it might be reasonable on the odd occasion to seek refuge there, especially if you’ve discussed with the neighbours which evenings they plan to have friends over.

Assuming we are ruling out the possibility of joining in the fun and all watching the football together, the key has to be more communication rather than less. 

Discuss this now and before anyone’s had anything to drink.

Getting the council, lawyers and acoustics experts involved would be the next steps, but would be quite an escalation and not the best use of everyone’s time. 

Tyler Clayton, a solicitor at Fosters Solicitors in Norwich, says: In the first instance, you should try and have another direct, yet friendly conversation with your neighbours. 

Be specific about the impact the noise is having on your lives and suggest practical solutions like reducing the volume, closing windows, or watching the games in another room. 

Follow up your conversation with a polite written request. 

This crystalises your complaint and serves as a reminder. 

That letter should be dated and state the desire to maintain a good relationship, and perhaps it can suggest a compromise. 

If those measures fail, you can in theory make an anonymous noise complaint to your local council or relevant authority, in the hope it might intervene. 

The council could serve a noise abatement notice if enough evidence is gathered to demonstrate the noise is a legal nuisance. 

However, keep in mind that your neighbours will probably work out that you’re the complainant.

As a final resort, you might consider bringing a claim against the neighbours in an action based on private nuisance. 

To do so, you must have an interest in the land affected by the noise nuisance, which you do as the owners.

A private nuisance is usually caused by a person doing something on their own land, which they are lawfully entitled to do but which becomes a nuisance when the consequences extend to neighbouring land. 

Interference with the enjoyment of the land must be substantial and unreasonable. 

It can arise from a single incident or a longer-term state of affairs. It can be caused by inaction or omission, as well as by some positive activity.

A broad unifying principle in this area of law is the need for reasonableness between neighbours. 

The court would undertake a balancing exercise, weighing up the factors in each case within the overarching principle of reasonableness. 

To assist the court, you would need to record decibel levels at as many points as possible on a routine basis, and possibly record the results in a diarised manner. 

The court is often most interested in quantifiable, ideally irrefutable data.

In this case, an obvious difficulty you face is that the Euros is an isolated, infrequent tournament. 

If a genuine approach from one neighbour to another does improve matters, the court approach might seem disproportionate and also risky if a judge, particularly a football-loving one, finds that you were overreacting. 

It will always be a question of degree of course, so if the noise is genuinely and objectively intolerable, perhaps not limited to the Euros, then it might be the case that a litigated solution seems to be your only option.

Remedies include damages to compensate for loss, or injunctive relief to require the neighbours to stop a continuing nuisance.

Make no mistake – court proceedings are incredibly expensive, so consider that side of things, before taking any action.