Abatement notices

The best thing about the street that I live on is that it is boring.  There is no drama, no police cars, fire engines, police helicopters and no dawn raids on anyone.  Every day is pretty much the same as the previous (Except for a few fires that were here a few years ago, but that's besides the point).  So what about places which are “interesting”?  What about people who are really big problems and cause huge amount of problems?  

We all know of someone who has really bad neighbours who have caused a lot of problems, or someone who plays their music really loud, which causes people untold misery.  What happens when they do this too often?  The council can turn up and give that person an Abatement Notice.  The link by the side of this sentence will give you a more detailed answer, but basically an abatement notice is something that a council can give someone to stop them causing a nuisance.  It is a way of the council saying  “Stop that now!”.

And so I wanted to see which region of wales was the worst. The abatement notice is the best way of looking at it.  Whichever area has the highest, is the worst (So to speak).  So I asked all Welsh councils

“Please could I have a list of all abatement notices served by your council (Ward by Ward breakdown please), since 2010”

My theory was I would hold a little league table and show how these things decrease \ increase the problems in an area. What I didn't expect, however, was how much data there would have been to wade through. So, instead what I did was all the ones issued by Welsh councils in 2015.  Much easier…

Name	Notices served	Main reason
Blaenau	114	Damp through chimney stack
Bridgend	123	Amplified Music, dogs barking, dust
Caerphilly	399
Cardiff	975
Carmarthenshire	144	foul water
Ceredigion	No Answer
Conway	No Answer
Denbighshire	72	Loud Music Accumulation, DIY
Flintshire	48	Loud Music Accumulation, DIY
Gwynedd	Not Answered
Anglesey	10	Loud Music, Barking Dogs, Alarms, Low Frequency Noise
Merthyr Tydfil	54
Monmouth	16	Numbers too low
Neath Port Talbot	232	Noise, drainage, damp, accumulations, odour, smoke, dust
Newport	203
Pembroke	Not Answered
Powys	44
RCT	Not Answered
Swansea	448	Noise and Dust

It does show a trend that there are more problems in cities\ densely populated areas (Swansea, Cardiff, Caerphilly having some of the highest), but it also shows that there thing we all hate.  Loud music, dust, smoke, these are things that really do annoy us all.  The thing that I love, however is that some of them are through Low Frequency noise. What does that even mean?

Anyway, it shows that there are some pretty bad areas out there BUT that things are getting better.  When I was trawling through the data, I did notice that there was a reduction of amount of abatement notices out there. That being said it also showed that there is a big image problem.  Think about it… Merthyr Tydfil with the Gurnos having ONLY 54, whereas Neath Port Talbot having 232.  Maybe there is something that I am not noticing here.

Goes to show that council are up on these things and do keep very good records on what is happening.