regulations for excessive noise due to barking

hi all, i will go into more details later as i am on my phone just now
does anyone know the amount and duration of barking to be considered excessive/ nusance, how and when they are monitored and what the steps are?
after every time in the past i have spoke to my neighbours they have said they couldnt hear my dogs in the house the police have just told me that they have started proceedings with some agency againt me!

From memory it has to be none stop for a minimum of 20 minutes and be a constant occurence, before they will even consider writing a letter to you about it.

I have no idea but my x next door neighbours dogs started barking when the owners left for work at 7am and continued to bark until they came home around five. She eventually put spray collars on them 7 months after the first set of complaints went in and was visited at least once per week during that time by the dog warden so doubt you've much to worry about today.

p.s - i dont mean that to sound sarcastic but i was considering selling my house at one point it was so bad, the authorities dont seem to do anything in any hurry, at least not around here

When my boy had to stay at a friend's when Freda was in season, he was barking when they were out. He was there for less than 5 days and the dog warden or environmental health had sent a letter within that time. No evidence was given to them either. I suppose it varies from one local authority to another.

I heard too it has to be on-off for at least 20 minutes at a time. I hope it can be resolved painlessly. I don't know why the police are involved already - round here it's an environmental health matter, then the police may get involved later.

This might be useful:

http://www.pkc.gov.uk/Planning+and+t...rking+Dogs.htm

"There is no specific legislation covering problems with Barking Dogs however complaints can be dealt with either as a nuisance under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 or the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982. It has been the practice where complaints have not been resolved informally to deal with them in terms of the Civic Government Act and the procedure is described in detail below."

Yea 20mins is what I thought too. Hope everything is ok. How come the police are involved? I thought it was enviromental health
Let us know what is going on won't you
Elaine xxx

A few years back I left my dogs in the car when I went to visit a friend for an hour and I later got a phone call from the police having received a complaint about them barking. Now they would only bark if someone went close to the car so I was astonished that the police had bothered to contact me. This was in south Birmingham.

Thanks guys

The story is!!!

I used to be quite friendly with my neighbours, when I got Ben I spoke to them on several occasions to let them know I had a dog and asked if he was barking when I was out, or if he was any bother to let me know - they said they haddnt heard a peep from him

When Mia came one sunday morning I was going to agility comp so I had to get up super early to walk the dogs, there was a GSD in the park and mia barked quite alot
Him next door stuck his head out the window and yelled at us to shut up
When I came back I went to speak to him and say I was sorry, he appologised and said there has been other dogs most mornings barking non stop, not my dog, but he just lost the rag that morning, I again spoke to him about noise in the house (Ben does bark a bit when I am taking them out for a walk and when he is getting one on one training with me - excitment - and I am working on it) he said again that he hasnt heard a peep in the house

You may rem a month or two ago I posted about the police at my door about dogs peeing on the neighbours lawn, excessive barking first thing in the morning and last at night (deff not my dogs) and dog fouling in the park (again deff not my dogs)

I was polite to the police, although it was a total shock to me as the neighbours had never even spoke to me about it
The police requested that I tell all the other dog walkers around which I did

I make sure that both the dogs are on the lead until I get to the park so the dogs dont pee on my grass and so encourage other dogs too pee on his grass (interestingly enough I have seen him mothers dog pee on his grass andmine)
I have been driving them to other places so that they are not even walking outside the house so much
and I made sure my garden was totaly secure for last thing at night peeing, rather than going into the park

as the weather has been getting better I have also been outside a few days gardning and doing some dog training

Training sesh with the dogs is about 5 - 10 min per dog MAX then I have a break, Ben barks for some of this time but as I said I am working on it
Most of the time when I am not training the dogs in the garden they are just chilling although sometimes they are playfighting, which involves running about and about 1 woof no more than once a min - hardly out of control barking I would have thought

Then as I didnt have much work today I thought I would really work on the dogs one on one in the park

Took Ben out first, as I was leaving Mia did give a few barks but outside the house I didnt hear anything and when I came back she was totaly chilled
Then I took Mia out, again Ben gave a few woofs of protest but when I came back he was fast asleep.

30 min later the police are at my door
the neighbour, instead of talking to me has phoned them to say while I was walking one dog the other was barking non stop
Their garden is a totaly no go area because of the HOURS of agility practise and the dogs barking non stop (errm right, I work, I am on the computer, I am walking the dogs!!) - the police actually asked me if I was running classes in my garden!! (tiny garden)

Then the police gave me the heads up that they dont know how far into the process it has gone but they know that the neighbours have started the process of getting the noise monitored

1st I cannot see why the police and whoever else it is take all this seriously when the neighbour hasnt even told me of the problem - which I dont think is even that bad!

But if it is being taken seriously I just wondered where I stand with that, there is no way I would have my dogs barking all day anyway, I would be too worried about there welfare to let them do that
But, even if there was a problem with a dog barking its something that would take time to fix I would have thought - you cant just have the police comming round and telling you to make the dogs quiet


sorry for the rant, im am just worried how this is going to impact me and the dogs
totaly stressed and feel a bit sick, its so out of the blue!

Oh my god Pam! That sounds totally shocking. I don't know the ins and outs of the law, but if there's no noise to record then there's no evidence (if you see what I mean?).

Might it be worth setting up a video camera (with sound recording) in your house for when you are out? Then that would be evidence for you to use to show that there's no excessive barking.

HTH xxx

Your neighbour will have to keep a diary for I think 4 weeks & they have to record every time the dogs bark.

When this happened to my friend, she received a letter from the Environmental Health Officer regarding her"dogs"barking(she only had one at the time !)

I told her to also keep a diary noting when Loukar barked, but also every time the neighbour was slamming doors, had the TV on way too loud etc. Loukar also came to me on any day that my friend was out & couldn't take him with her. The period when Loukar was supposed to be barking non stop he was actually with me 20 odd miles away !!

The EHO told my friend that the barking has to be more than 20 minutes each occurrence as in her words"dogs do bark"

Her neighbours never completed the diary & the matter was dropped by the EH.

Interestingly yesterday morning at 7.30 her neighbours drive was being dug up using a pneumatic drill which I could hear over the phone whilst she was in her bedroom as far as she could get away from the noise.

i second the idea of you recording it yourself, if you have access to a camcorder with a date and time on it and sound recording, you can prove that its not them. it must be horrible to have this happening when you dont even have a noise problem with your dogs. hope it gets resolved quickly for you.