Strabane is the noisiest place in the county

IT’S official… Strabane is the noisiest place in Tyrone. Recent figures about the number of noise complaints to councils across the North sees Derry and Strabane Council record considerably more disturbances than their counterparts in Omagh and Mid-Ulster.

From April 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020, there were 474 noise complaints made in Derry and Strabane – in contrast there were only 275 complaints filed in Fermanagh and Omagh, and 375 in Mid Ulster, making these two areas the recipients of the fewest reports of all 11 district council areas.

Belfast was the noisiest district by far, receiving a huge 6,230 complaints.

The primary source of these aural disturbances across every area, excluding Belfast, was animal noise. Animal noise was responsible for 234 reports in Derry and Strabane, 130 in Fermanagh and Omagh, and 194 in Mid Ulster. In Belfast, animal noise accounted for 631 complaints.

Music/Televisions/Parties contributed substantially to the overall number of complaints in every area, but of the district covering Tyrone, again Derry and Strabane Council received the most with 90 reports of this nature, over double the 43 recorded in Fermanagh and Omagh and the 45 in Mid Ulster. However even Strabane fell far behind Belfast where this type of noise was astronomically more prevalent than in any other area, with 3,291 complaints of this kind being recorded.

Derry and Strabane filed just ten industrial noise complaints, where as Mid Ulster, who recorded more than any area across the North, heard 36. This is probably reflective of the industrial nature of South Tyrone – a region home to many large engineering firms.

The report, published by the Department of Agriculture, also showed that anti-social behaviour played a fairly negligible part in the number of noise complaints in Tyrone, with six complaints in Derry and Strabane, seven in Mid Ulster and four in Fermanagh and Omagh.

No more geographically specific breakdown of the figures is available therefore the number of complaints recorded within Strabane itself remains unknown.

Overall, across the whole of the North, the figures collated showed that a total of 11,356 complaints were received in 2019/20, down 9.6 per-cent compared to the previous year’s figure (12,563).

Domestic noise, which includes loud music, televisions, parties and noisy animals accounted for 80.82 per-cent of all noise complaints, according to the latest statistics.