Data seen by Critic Te Arohi has shed light on where, when and why noise complaints were lodged around Dunedin. One Otago student managed to rack up nine in a single semester.
According to Dunedin City Council data seen and painstakingly analysed by Critic Te Arohi, 3,613 noise complaints were recorded for the year 2021. According to a DCC spokesperson, these were mostly due to “party and stereo noise”. Of these, North D and the CBD accounted for 69% (nice) of these complaints.
North D, interestingly, accounted for less than 20% of the total noise complaints in the Dunedin area. You may expect that February would see the most complaints there, but although February’s 192 noise complaints (almost 7 per day) is a pretty good effort, it was beaten out by October, with a whopping 289 complaints. In other words, that’s over 9 people calling noise control into North D every single day. Maybe students just want to cram in silence.
Throughout 2021, there were 61 unlucky people who got their equipment seized by noise control throughout the entire Dunedin area. May seems to be the month when noise control gets real trigger happy, with 12 seizures. Henry, a DJ and Otago student, racked up over 9 noise complaints in the first semester, all on his own. In his words: “if we got one more complaint the council could come in and take our loud boom boom machines.” Good luck prying these loud boom boom machines out of Henry’s cold, dead, Billy Mav-soaked hands.
Henry described some of the situations where they’ve had noise control called as “music we were listening to while studying, eating, or having DMC’s in a bedroom”. He worried that with equipment being seized and Dunedin venues charging high rates for bands to play, it could potentially hurt “the up-and-coming music industry in Dunedin”.
Sam, a student, was unsure as to whether noise control has been more aggressive in recent months. He thought that “noise control has gotten a lot worse in the past years… but we gave them a fake name and fake address twice and they didn’t really care so it's definitely a mixed bag”.
Outside of stereo noise, though, the most interesting noise control complaints include: TVs (four noise complaints), roadworks (seven noise complaints), a dog (one), a ship (one) and a church hall (one). It seems the presence of Jesus in that church was interrupted by noise control officers that day. Rather intriguingly, there was also an “other” category. While the DCC spokesperson did not disclose what type of noise falls into this unspecified area, Critic Te Arohi can only assume it has something to do with extremely noisy sex.