LETTER: Wild Life noise

We were also told that the performers would stop at 11pm, but that ‘background music’ would continue until 1am.

This was obviously allowed by councillors who do not live anywhere near the airport and don’t know how decibel levels should be calculated.

The amount of noise that is tolerable during the daytime, and even into early evening, should be severely reduced in the late evening and after 11pm, when many people are going to bed.

Many residents around here had to work the next morning (both Sunday and Monday) and we were kept awake until 1am on both nights.

The person on the complaints line for the event, to whom I spoke on both nights, said they were abiding by the rules they had been given, but she would send someone to monitor the level of noise at our end of West Way.

We believe the sound was actually increased after 10pm on Sunday evening.

There is a law about firework displays not being allowed after 11pm, so why was the airport event allowed to continue until 1am?

This was not ‘background music’, it was very loud and the bass drumming, continuous and monotonous, was the worst part of it.

It should be borne in mind that wind and weather conditions change the direction in which sound travels, so even if there were some lucky residents who did not hear too much this year, that doesn’t mean that they will not have their lives disrupted by it in the future.

Others who live nearer the event than we do have said the noise disturbance continued all day and that is totally unacceptable.

Residents of Adur who live around the airport had this event dumped on us without consultation.

However, even if it had been democratically agreed – a word I don’t think Adur councillors understand – I would still say that the noise was at too high a level and should have stopped at 11pm.

On the day after it was all over, I was out shopping and heard a number of people saying they were unable to sleep on either night.

For those who had to work, it must have been particularly intolerable.

I hope this letter gives others the encouragement to write to complain to their Adur councillors.

It is only by complaining that we will get something done because the organisers have already advertised the dates for next year.

Please don’t stay silent because you think there is no point in complaining.

Petitions are getting results these days, so add your experiences of the weekend to ours, because weight of numbers really does have an effect.

Mrs W.M. Dowse

West Way

Lancing

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