QLD: Noise in your apartment building – What can you do?

This article about dealing with noise issues in your Queensland apartment building has been supplied by Chris Irons, Hynes Legal.

Table of Contents:

• QUESTION: The council is carrying out loud building work nearby up to the early hours of the morning. This has made sleep impossible at times for most residents. What can we do?

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Question: The council is carrying out loud building work nearby up to the early hours of the morning. This has made sleep impossible at times for most residents. What can we do?

What process we can follow when the local Brisbane council is the cause of noise issues? All owners in our apartment block have recently received a council letter stating that ongoing works will continue near to our inner city building until the early hours of the morning, with the noisiest works done up until 1 am!

Most of the residents of the building are elderly. The clanging, banging and other noise has made sleep impossible at times for most residents.

We’ve been told, and accept, council has to work out of hours to get things done but short of buying industrial strength earplugs is there anything we can do?

Answer: I’d say the first step is clarifying with Council what they’re doing and that’s probably best done through your committee.

Do you have any details about the works, for example, how long they are meant to go for? If the work is finishing up next week, then there is not a lot of point in doing anything about it and you might just have to live it a few more days.

Let’s assume that the work is going to be happening for a while. I’d say the first step is clarifying with Council what they’re doing and that’s probably best done through your committee, although it’s fine for individual owners to do it also. It may well be that Council is not fully aware of the implications and impact of their work.

I’m a big believer in the adage that if you’re going to present a problem, you present a solution too – so I’d be suggesting that you and/or the committee need to be talking solutions. What things could be done to make the noise bearable? Is it only about changing the hours in which it is done? Or is it the type of noise at certain times? Is it the case that you (and by you, I mean your building) presents to Council a package of options to make everyone’s life more bearable and ask them to consider?

Your body corporate may also need to seek legal advice. While this isn’t a body corporate dispute per se, there may be other legal options available to your building under non-body corporate legislation.

Then there are the options to make a complaint to council, and possibly the Ombudsman, about the situation. Those are unlikely to get resolved quickly though, so I’d be urging you to come back to my suggestions in the previous paragraph.

Chris Irons
E: chris.irons@hyneslegal.com.au
P: 07 3193 0500
W: Hynes Legal

This post appears in Strata News #364.

If you have a question about dealing with noise issues or something to add to the article, please leave a comment below.

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Read more:

• QLD: Mandatory Self Resolution
• QLD: Q&A Can I Get My Body Corporate to Test Noise Levels in My Unit?

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