Noise complaints are impacting hospitality and live entertainment venues
Rising noise complaints against pubs, bars, and restaurants after the COVID-19 pandemic are creating significant challenges for hospitality venues, threatening the future of live entertainment, which has prompted the Night Time Economy Industry to call for change.
For hospitality venues, whether hosting live music to boost revenue and footfall, improve customer satisfaction, or purely through their passion for it, one thing which shouldn’t come with hosting live entertainment is noise complaints.
As Music Venue Trust puts it, 'We have to be practical and say that Music Venues make noise. Music is a noise. Noise is a nuisance. Is music therefore a nuisance? We don’t think so.'
Despite this belief, the reality of bars, pubs and restaurants having noise complaints made against them has surged in recent years. This poses a significant threat to the sector's sustainability and prevents it from thriving culturally and financially.
Following on from data from the Night Time Industries Association, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request revealed a 53% rise in noise complaints in London from 2018 to 2022. This was reflected in noise abatement notices, which increased from 34 to 51 in the same four-year period.
National trends in noise complaints
To determine whether this issue extends beyond London, GigPig submitted FOI requests to 10 major cities outside of the capital by asking how many hospitality venues (restaurants, bars, clubs and pubs) have had a noise complaint or a noise abatement notice issued between 2019 and 2023.
The findings show a mixed picture, where five cities experienced increased noise complaints while others remained stable or saw declines. Dublin saw the largest increase of 91%, from 338 in 2019 to 644 in 2023.
Elsewhere in Glasgow, the city consistently received the most complaints with 4,629 over the past four years, a percentage difference of 120.43% ahead of Belfast, which received the second most complaints with 2,100.
