Introduction

Reviewing the Regulations

EPA is due to review the Environment Protection (Residential noise) Regulations 1997. The regulations set out the times when noisy items of equipment (such as stereos, air conditioners, and power tools) may not be used on a residential property, if the noise can be heard on a neighbouring home.

As part of this review EPA seeks to consult with all parties affected by the regulations. These are:

  • Victorian residents
  • Victorian police and local governments, who have responsibility for investigating neighbourhood noise issues
  • Other state government bodies
  • The construction industry, as the regulations apply to the construction of residential properties

Current understanding of the impact of noise on the community

EPA conducted a community response to environmental noise study (Social Survey) in late 2006 to better understand the impact of noise on the community and assist with future noise management programs.

The findings of the social survey indicated that road traffic noise is the most significant noise source in Victoria, is heard by 70% of respondents, and annoys or bothers 20% of respondents moderately to extremely.Neighbour noise is the second most significant source of noise, is heard by 57% of respondents, annoying 15% of them moderately to extremely, with greatest effect at the start of the week-day and at night on weekends.

To better understand the experiences of Victorian residents in relation to noise issues, EPA conducted a telephone survey of 1213 people in early 2007. This provided an overview of how many people hear and are negatively affected by noise in their home. Noise from neighbours was the second most significant source of noise affecting 900,000 Victorians.

Limitations to our current knowledge on the impact of noise

Whilst these surveys provided and contributed to increased understanding around the impacts of noise, they however did not provide detail on the particular experiences people have had of residential noise such as;

  • Descriptive examples of the kinds of responses they have taken when impacted by neighbour noise
  • How long issues carried on for
  • The kind of experiences for different housing situations
  • Their experiences of making a complaint
  • How authorities or neighbours responded to their complaint
  • How the regulations work or do not work for them

That is, the information collected so far has not given a perspective on the human experiences around residential noise, such as the stress it causes, the way it affects relationships with neighbours and how well legislation and government response actually addresses noise issues. This kind of information is generally not provided to the EPA, as police and local government generally manage residential noise issues independently. Research with these authority groups has identified legislative and guidance issues that impact on government process, but it appears that the perspectives of the authority groups have generally failed to consider the related impacts of noise on Victorian residents.

Using story focus groups to address the limitations

Focus groups are a well recognised methodology for providing in-depth data around inquiries of an experiential and behavioural nature. To better understand the experiences residents have had around neighbourhood noise, and to provide an opportunity to use this knowledge to guide the regulatory review a focus group approach was taken. In particular, the focus groups concentrated on the use of community storytelling to develop and provide greater depth to earlier survey research and to give residents an accessible way to input into the regulatory review process.

A narrative of an experience has the capacity to not only relate a number of issues or problems, but also carries a personal voice that brings to reality the human impacts of noise. It was considered that giving a human dimension to the issue would help to broaden the thinking and approach of government during the development of regulatory options.

It should be noted that the focus group methodology is qualitative and exploratory in nature and is not intended to provide statistically valid data. The results from focus group research should not be considered representative of any population segment or point of view of any population segment. The non-random method of recruitment and the small size of the sample do not permit this type of observation.

Focus groups are designed to elicit reactions from participants about a particular topic, in this case residential noise, and are designed to generate data that help to provide a deeper understanding around a subject area. Every effort was made in this project to provide a high standard and quality of design to ensurethe focus groups were properly conducted, and as a result, contribute to both meaningful and insightful results.

The next section describes the collection of the residents stories through the use of the story focus group. The stories elicited through the story focus groups were then used in a discussion workshop with authority groups.

Collecting the Residents Stories

Story focus groups were used to collect stories from residents providing the residents the opportunity to share stories contributing:

  • Descriptive examples of the kinds of responses they have taken when impacted by neighbour noise
  • How long issues carried on for
  • The kind of experiences for different housing situations
  • Their experiences of making a complaint
  • How authorities or neighbours responded to their complaint
  • How the regulations work or do not work for them

The story focus groups ran for between 90 minutes to 2 hours and were conducted across the following locations:

  • Traralgon (Latrobe City Council) 19thOctober
  • Collingwood (DHS/Yarra City Council) 25thOctober
  • St Albans (Brimbank City Council) 26thOctober
  • Melbourne CBD (Melbourne City Council) 29thOctober
  • Cranbourne North (Casey City Council) 7thNovember

Where sessions were cancelled or interested parties could not make it to a session, arrangements were made with the consultant to conduct personal phone interviews. One hearing impaired resident was interviewed at his home and an elderly resident sent in an audio cassette, which was copied to a digital format.

In total, 12 phone interviews were conducted. These interviews involved residents from differing locations across Melbourne metropolitan. The phone interviews involved residents sharing stories of neighbour noise with a telling time ranging from 8 to 25 minutes.

With consent of the participants, the story focus groups and phone interviews were all recorded in digital audio and later transcribed into text form and anonymised for use in the discussion workshop. (For a full description, including composition of the groups and the recruitment of participants for the story focus groups see Appendix A.)

The Discussion Workshop – Processing the Stories

Purpose

The purpose of the discussion workshop was to provide a way for agency and industry representatives involved in managing residential noise to hear and consider the perspectives of the residents in making recommendations for improvement and change.

Approach

Collecting the Residents Stories discussed the purpose and process of engagement of residents across Melbourne metro and a regional location to share their experiences on neighbourhood noise. The process of collecting residents stories lead to the collation of 71 stories.

The stories recorded in digital audio were transcribed into text; other stories were forwarded through email and resident stories’ recorded on audio tape were later transcribed (see Appendix B: Residents Stories for the complete collection of stories which have been anonymised). These collected stories were then analysed based on a framework of:

  • Number of words in story
  • Sources of noise
  • Type of noise maker
  • Ending (happy/resolved etc)
  • Story Theme
  • Story Rating (1,2,3 star) where 3 is the most powerful, emotive or meaningful and 1 the least (see Appendix E: Analysis of Stories)

This initial analysis of stories allowed a collection of 29 stories with 3 star ratings to be taken into a workshop for Local Government held on the 27th November 2007.

Workshop Findings and Reflections

Twelve participants from a variety of councils across Melbourne metro were present at the workshop. These participants were invited into small groups of two’s or three’s to then read through the selected stories and write on post-it notes their observations of:

  • Themes within the story
  • Descriptions of the Noise Maker
  • Descriptions of the Noise Sufferer(See Appendix D: Themes, Clusters and Chapters from Workshop Participants for the documented results.)

As participants read through the stories, they were also invited to mark with highlighter pens quotes and statements which they felt captured an important or relevant aspect of this project investigating neighbourhood noise. These quotes were transcribed and appear in Appendix C: Highlighted story quotes from workshop participants. The following section provides the key domains and themes emerging from the stories (see Appendix E: Analysis of Stories for full documentation).

Key Domains from the Stories

The key domains emerging from the analysis of the 71 stories from residents were:

  • Characteristics and impacts of Residential Noise
  • Genuine suffering can go unrecognised
  • Experience of making a complaint
  • Thoroughness or lack-of in the investigation process
  • Barriers with noise, tenancy and body corporate law
  • Barriers with noise maker
  • Barriers from noise sufferer
  • Particular noise sources

Characteristics and Impacts of Residential Noise

The characteristics and impacts of residential noise provided a rich source of evidence demonstrating impacts on health, impacts on a residents’ ability to enjoy their home environment, financial costs and inconvenience to the noise sufferer and illustrated the duration and severity of the problem of residential noise.

The impacts on health included:

  • Stress
  • Anxiety and fearfulness
  • Irritability
  • Blood pressure
  • Loss of sleep
  • Exacerbation of a physical or psychological medical condition

Some quotes from the stories illustrating examples of these are:

“I was like that every time I heard thump, and it was like in a second, the blood pressure went, I was tensed up. I used to feel physically ill whenever I was driving back to my house, just going “I’m going to cop it tonight or what’s going to happen?” You feel constantly on guard, constantly sick, constantly you’re just a mess, it just stuffs you.” – Story 16

“… My blood pressure went up to the degree where I was in some trouble and had to go to hospital because I had no relief unless I actually left my house and went somewhere else”. –Story 48

“Just the high blood pressure, the stress, the affects if has on your health. Because I could feel it pumping through my body. I could feel it vibrating my organs. I could feel it in my head, just shaking everything or shaking our windows.” – Story 52

“… It’s a threat to me, it’s threatening. When I’m on my own, it’s threatening.” – Story 25

“ … But the sad part was, out of all the people that were affected, there was only me that complained and I think that’s sad, and that’s what I was saying about the fear. Because I used to be scared to go out and I was scared to stay in.” –Story 2

The impacts on the residents’ ability to enjoy their home environment were reflected in interference with speech, watching tv, outdoor areas and what one might consider ‘normal’ enjoyment of home activities.

It could be said that many if not all the stories collected were supportive of this theme, howeverhere’s one illustrative quote:

“Well, it was originally a five acre property. It got split up to two, two and a half acre properties and the houses just really are a driveway apart – one house at the back, one at the front. The noise was there as soon as I moved in five years ago. Drums with like big amplifiers. They would have maybe up to four two hour sessions a day. It was so loud that my house shook, and it’s a brick house, and it shook. I could not have a conversation with anyone in my lounge room. I could not have my television on and hear it. People would visit me and go again because they couldn't stay. “ –Story 1

The financial costs and and inconvenience to the noise sufferer included:

  • Having to sleep elsewhere
  • Having to modify their home – double glazing etc
  • Having to wear earplugs in their homes
  • Moving home
  • Noise occurring for months or years

Some quotes from the stories illustrating examples of these are:

“I have asked them, on this particular occasion to turn it down, I think it was three times. I didn't experience any evidence of them having turned it down, so I did actually call the police. It was mid evening, I don’t know, seven, eight thirty, something like that, and I have a chronic illness and noise sensitivity is a side effect of my illness as well, and all this was over my CD. They were quite rude and anyway the police obviously came. The police asked me if I wanted to be contacted and I say, "no, I just have to put my ear plugs in" and I literally cried myself to sleep that night, actually.” – Story 69

“I replaced my windows with double glazed windows – didn't help. I put up with it for nearly a year, and my other neighbours were saying, “how can you stand it?”” – Story 1

“I lasted less than you. You did three years before you got there, I ended up selling my house in just over twelve months.” – Story 2

“…but it was so bad at the time that we had to, we've got two young kids, well they were young then, they're teenagers now, they couldn't sleep. We spent endless Saturday nights, particularly, sleeping at my parent's place with the kids, because it was just, it was terrible.” – Story 60

The duration and severity of problem was illustrated in stories which demonstrated severe suffering, volume intensity, the inability to mitigate low frequency noise, and the inability to escape noise with the issue being in many cases both inside and outdoors.

Some quotes from the stories illustrating examples of these are:

“… I have nowhere else to go to escape this noise … It makes me feel incredibly tense”. –Story 55

“I think what happened was, I lived next door to an elderly gentleman and he died and unfortunately, at half past three in the morning, his grandson and all his friends moved in, and that was the beginning and we had loud music from morning until night. Sometimes almost 24 hours a day. You couldn't sleep, you couldn't think, you couldn't watch your tele, you couldn't read. I used to go to bed with cushions and things wrapped around my ears, and as you said, you could feel the floor going book boom, like this. It didn't just stop there. He, at times, I reckon there were up to twenty people there drinking.” – Story 2

Genuine suffering can go unrecognised

Experience of making a complaint

Thoroughness or lack-of in the investigation process

Barriers with noise, tenancy and body corporate law

Barriers with noise maker

Barriers from noise sufferer

Particular noise sources

Observations of participants and process

If asked what many participants might remember from the workshop, we wouldn’t be surprised if they shared the story of the subwoofer. Given, as many of the stories have indicated, that noise suffering is physical, we decided to hire a subwoofer to conduct a short activity after morning tea. Whilst the participants were outside mingling with tea and cake, we started a 30 minute 50 Hertz track on the sub-woofer. This track was one which is more commonly known as the sound of power and has the sound of a deep almost inaudible rumbling. As participants entered the room, some made comments about ‘gee, the air conditioning is loud in here’. We waited for all participants to sit down and generally let the silence fill up with the deep rumbling sound. The track went on for 10 minutes.

Finally, after several people mentioned the sound getting worse, we got up and stopped the track. The physical relief that people experienced continued for at least 5 seconds. Not just your usual ‘ahh that’s stopped’. It was more akin to a deep long sigh, which just kept on going. This coupled with the debrief of walking around the room and experiencing the differences in sound based on physical structure and acoustics was a real ‘aha’ moment for participants. They realized in a matter of less than 15 minutes the real effects noise can have in terms of stress, but also in terms of a local council officer investigating noise and how they physically need to experience it from the location where the noise sufferer does.

Workshop Next Steps – Participants Providing Guidance

Background – Key headings from prior consultation

Suggestions for Guidance from workshop participants

(to be incorporated – heading per page)

Appendix A: The Story Focus Groups

Recruitment of Residents

Eight locations were planned, based on areas with different housing mix and accessible community facilities.

The methods used to approach the local community were very different in each area, although the focus was on using posters and word of mouth in local areas, combined with local media. Interested people were to contact EPA to register for a session. EPA staff screened and interviewed callers.