A new holiday let nuisance reporting system has gone ‘live’ and is already receiving complaints about anti-social behaviour from residents.
The idea of setting up a mechanism to log grumbles was unanimously agreed at the September meeting of Keswick Town Council and reported in The Keswick Reminder.
At the meeting councillors heard that there was a lack of data being collected to quantify the size, scale and seriousness of the problem. They backed a proposal by Cllr Louise Dunn to “simplify and provide a method for people experiencing anti-social behaviour to report it”.
The number of holiday lets in the town has grown “considerably” in the past three years and there has been a trend for B&Bs to change to large holiday lets, with owners delegating all management to agencies.
The town council had been receiving complaints from local residents about issues including noise nuisance, “party houses”, poor maintenance and issues with litter but the data was not being collated to inform agencies – the MP, Cumberland Council and the Lake District National Park Authority – of how big the problem is.
Since this publicity, reports have started to come in and they make it clear that anti-social behaviour emanating from holiday lets is impacting on young families, those of working age and the elderly.
The reports that have already been received – by people logging onto the town council home page (www.keswicktowncouncil.gov.uk) and scrolling down to a blue icon labelled Holiday Nuisance Complaints – include the following comments:
Family: “Over the years we have had major problems with noise from holiday homes. I have lost count of the number of times they have disturbed and woken our little boy up with their noise. There are three young families with children on our street, along with elderly people surrounding and everyone is getting fed up with these large holiday lets.”
Elderly: “Guests were a noise-nuisance last night/early this morning. Even though I sleep at the front of the house, on the top floor, the noise of singing/laughter/music was loud enough to disturb my sleep… At roughly 2.45am, I phoned the owner a third time. I have a significant ongoing health issue and disturbed sleep has a bad effect on anyone’s health, never mind someone with my issues.”
Working age: “There was an unbelievable amount of noise coming from this holiday house from midnight until 4am on Saturday morning. Shouting at the top of their voices for hours. I had to cancel plans the next evening as so tired and upset. These incidents cause significant stress, as does anticipation of them. Some noise is expected, but not this.”
The holiday lets are not being named at this stage to give the owners or letting agencies a chance to respond.
“Keswick residents had given up reporting these issues as nothing was ever done,” said Cllr Dunn. “So we would urge people to report any issues they face – be it noise, litter or overgrown gardens.
“We have already been able to send some reports to the LDNPA to illustrate the issues the town is facing. The more detailed examples we have the better – to share with the holiday letting companies and also the owners, so that they can take appropriate action.”
People can also call into the town council office to make a complaint.
