Car alarms

An alarm that has been sounding for more than five minutes and is affecting local residents is considered by law to be a nuisance.

The Environmental Enforcement team get many calls about noisy car alarms. This is the action we can take:

• Once a nuisance has been established, the council can serve a Noise Abatement Notice on the owner of the vehicle.
• If the owner cannot be located, we place a notice directly on the vehicle. This notice requires the owner to deactivate the alarm within 45 minutes.
• We do everything possible to find the owners of noisy vehicles.  If the owner has been found, a reasonable length of time is given for the alarm to be turned off, and we will extend the one hour time limit if necessary.
• If a car alarm has been sounding for more than one hour and we are unable to find the owner, we will arrange for the vehicle to be opened so the alarm can be switched off.  We take every care not to cause damage and use specialist companies contracted to us. If it's not possible to unlock a door, we may have to break a window.
• After entering a vehicle we make sure that it's left secure or immobilised.
• A notice is placed inside the vehicle (not in plain site to passers-by) to inform the owner of our actions.
• If a car alarm has been sounding for more than one hour and we are unable to find the owner we may remove the vehicle and take it to Mandela Way car pound and register it with the police. Please note that you will incur a fee for releasing your vehicle from the car pound.
• We reclaim our costs from the owners of vehicles and may prosecute them. A successful prosecution may result in a fine.

Legislation used

Sections 79 and 80 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.