Suburban crescent crowned city’s noisiest street

Dust off your earmuffs: Invercargill has a new noisiest street — although some of its residents disagree.

Information released by Invercargill City Council shows Waiau Cres, Kingswell, has taken the title after clocking up nearly twice as many noise complaints as any other street in the city.

The crescent tallied 54 complaints from five addresses, which was well ahead of Tay St’s 24 complaints, Tramway Rd’s 16 complaints, and Nevis Crescent’s 17 complaints for the same 12-month period.

Glenda Cleveland has called Waiau Cres home for more than 50 years and jumped to its defence this week.

‘‘I’ve lived in this street since 1972, and yeah we do have the odd car that revs down the street, but I wouldn’t say it’s the noisiest street in Invercargill,’’ she said.

One resident, who did not wish to be named, said they had lived on the street for six years and found it very quiet.

But another person, who also wished to remain anonymous, said there were a lot of gatherings near their house which ‘‘sucks sometimes’’ because they did shift work.

The person said the street was quite busy with cars parking in large numbers near their house and motorbikes running up and down.

Invercargill City Council revealed the most common noise complaint in the city related to loud music overnight, with the noisiest month being November.

However, the total number of complaints had dropped, down from 820 to 723 annually.

The council would issue an infringement if an occupant breached an excessive noise direction within three days, and the number of those had also dropped from 16 to five.

Eight complaints had resulted in equipment being seized.

Information provided by the council was for the 12 months to March 13, which was the same time period used in last year’s breakdown.

Newbie St previously took top spot, with 23 complaints but did not crack the top four this time around.

The council’s noise control policy does not cover barking dogs which comes under the Dog Control Act.

• LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.