Annoying builders

Hey, for the last month or so there has been maintenance work under the road right outside my student halls. Now usually they start at around 8.30 which is pretty annoying (especially when your tryin to recover from a hangover) but occasionally (like today) they started at 7 with drilling. Are they allowed to do this? And, if not, who do i get in contact with to stop them doing this?

Reply 1

L i b

Depends - are they working on a public road or a university-owned road?

You could complain to the university or local authority about it.

Yes, they're reasonably allowed to do this - but if your local authority thinks it warrants action then they can pursue it was a statutory nuisance under the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

Usually however, the local authority would already have set work times with the builders. It's quite possible that they may be violating their agreement by working that early, but like I say you'd have to have the council find out.

The problem of course is that local councils operate at a snail's pace, and likely by the time they've done anything the work will complete. You could always write directly to the site manager and make your complaint known too. Conceivably you could sue them under the law of nuisance, but that's rather impractical.