Reporting a Nuisance in Ealing

A short epic of civic persistence (and becoming the problem)

Please complete this form.

Invocation

Sing, website, sing.
Of forms and thresholds, boxes small,
of windows that open into darkness,
of daytime hotlines that take you to voicemail
by those who never lived the night.

Sing of a citizen with sleep in debt,
who brings a sound, a smell, a (non-epileptic) tremor
to the gates of order —
and finds, beyond the gate,
only more order.

I. The Omen

It starts with noise —
The drilling; the forklift trucks; the alarms; industrial skips emptied like thunderclaps, all in the early hours.

Or it starts with smell —
petrol and tar-sweet, smoke and solvent-bitter,
a breath that arrives to wake you from sleep.

Or dust, settling quietly into lungs and windowsills.
Or vibration, shuddering through walls,
loosening fixtures, rattling bones.
Or damage, hairline cracks creeping across ceilings,
cupboards that no longer close,
doors that unhinge, like minds.

Or all of them at once —
for the world is rarely polite enough
to separate its harms by department.

You close the windows.
You reopen them.
You learn the wind direction by its cruelty.
You time your life around someone else’s activity
until time itself becomes the nuisance.

Then, like a dutiful soul,
you decide to report it.

And thus you step onto the path.

II. The Naming of the Thing

First comes the rite of precision.

Name it, says the Council.
Name it as the system prefers to hear it.

If Noise —
is it neighbour? is it construction?
is it commercial, industrial, or “other”?

If Odour —
is it dust, fumes, emissions, cooking,
historic contamination, or something else entirely?

If Air Pollution —
is it a vehicle, a business, a development site,
a legacy issue, or a statistical abstraction?

If Vibration —
is it perceptible, measurable, structural,
or merely felt?

If Damage —
can it be proven to have happened after
the works began?

You raise one hand:

It is one thing. It is ruining my life.

The system raises two:

It is many things. Choose one.

Choose carefully.
Choosing wrong does not produce an error message.
It produces silence.

III. The Windows of Opportunity

Now seek the window.

There are many windows.
They are all clearly labelled.
They all lead somewhere else.

Some windows lead to pages
that define what might count as a nuisance,
without explaining how to report one.

Some lead to forms —
online, downloadable, printable —
which shrink your story into boxes
until your distress becomes a checkbox.

Some lead to email addresses
which accept your message
as the relentless beeping saps your attention.

Some lead to phone numbers
answered by recorded message in office hours
while the nuisance performs
its finest work at night.

None of the windows say what happens next.
None of them say who holds the keys.
None of them say how long the corridor is. Please do not close this window.

IV. The Citizen Learns Their Role

Here is the truth, spoken softly:

You are not a complainant.
You are a data point.

But not the useful kind.

Your report may be logged.
Or counted.
Or categorised into a cousin-category
and thereby never counted at all.

It may be assessed,
unless it is deemed anecdotal.

It may be investigated,
unless thresholds are not met.

You will not be told which.
That would create obligation.

Instead you are given tasks,
as a monk is given beads:

Keep a diary.
Record dates.
Record times.
Describe frequency.
Measure impact.
Photograph cracks.
Film vibrations.
Collect dust in bags.

You gather.
You document.
You comply.

And waiting becomes your new address.

V. The Hymn of Reassurance

Somewhere along the way
a scroll appears: reassurance, stamped and calm.

It sings the same four lines:

• monitoring is taking place
• regulators are satisfied
• levels are within guidelines (and, when they’re not)
• it’s not harmful to health

Sometimes a fifth line is added, sotto voce:

There’s a housing crisis. There’s nothing we can do.

The reassurance does not mention you.
It does not cite your report.
It does not say whether your suffering
was counted as signal or written off as noise. But if it does, it says:

You’re evidence is unscientific and unverified.

It does not clarify
who is responsible now,
or later,
or whether responsibility has moved
like jumpers for goalposts.

It exists parallel to your life —
not in response to it.

VI. The Optional Quest of Persistence

If you persist, you begin to see.

Noise is treated separately from odour,
even if they break into your home together.

Odour is treated separately from air pollution,
even when they choke the same throat.

Dust is treated as temporary.
Vibration is treated as subjective.
Damage is treated as pre-existing.

Site-specific issues are treated separately
from general complaints,
even when they are reported by the same residents
about the same place
for the same years.

Meetings are organised. Hundreds may complain about the same thing. But they do not count. Each incident must be logged separately. Not by email, or on social media.

Each nuisance report must be isolated from every other. Investigated hours or days later. Your lived experience. Verified by trained professionals. Please complete this form.

You start to suspect
the maze was not an accident.

VII. The First Prophecy

Eventually, one of two endings approaches:

Either the nuisance stops —
temporarily, unpredictably, without explanation —
like a beast wandering out of sight.

Or you stop reporting it —
because you are tired,
or busy,
or worn down enough
to accept the phrase “within acceptable limits”
as a lifestyle.

From the outside, these endings look identical.

Complaint levels fall.
Data improves.
The system records success.

Only your life, what’s left of it, remembers what happened.

VIII. A Note on Responsibility (the Smokescreen Chapter)

At no point are you told clearly
whether your report is handled by:

Environmental Health,
Pollution Control,
Planning Enforcement,
the Council,
or the Environment Agency.

You may be told — encouragingly —
that it is “good” you are reporting so much.

You have to explain, patiently,
that no, it is bad.
Bad that so many reports are necessary.
Bad that so many incidents exist to be reported.

This clarification is noted.
Nothing changes.

The ambiguity is presented as complexity.
In practice, it is insulation.

IX. Amendment After Years of Practice

Here is the chorus you learn by heart:

Report it to the Environment Agency — ten days.
Report it to the developer (the perpetrator) — forty-eight hours.
Report it to the Council hotline — six.

Each instruction arrives as progress.
Each one is framed as responsiveness.
Each one quietly resets the clock.

You comply. You always comply.

You learn which channel produces acknowledgement,
which produces silence,
which loops you gently back to the start.

Years pass.
Panels convene.
Councillors attend, nod, ask questions
that are not answered,
then rotate off like seasons.

Experts attend only to reveal That they are not technically qualified It is not their responsibility To answer your questions They are only doing their job It’s all perfectly normal.

Odour collection maps fill with dots.
Lungs with particles that kill. Minds, and relationships, break.

And still, someone suggests — again —
that you report the odour
to the noise nuisance hotline.

This is not confusion.

This is training.

X. The Real Correction

A subtle shift, almost invisible:

The sound does not change.
The smell does not change.
The dust still settles.
The walls still tremble.
The cracks still widen.

What changes is the story told about it.

The problem is no longer the nuisance.
The problem is the person who keeps noticing.

You are now:

• persistent
• difficult
• overly detailed
• emotionally involved
• a sensitive receptor (“fucking moaners!")

You are advised to be patient.
You are thanked for your engagement.
You are reassured.

If you do not retract your frustration, The council may begin legal proceedings against you.

And the system begins to treat you
as the anomaly it must manage.

XI. Final Diagnosis (the Climax)

In the end you understand the purpose of the process:

Not to resolve the nuisance —
but to test whether you will stop.

Not because the issue is gone,
but because you are tired,
or busy,
or worn down enough
to accept that nothing will ever quite count as enough.

From the outside, this looks like resolution.

Inside the system, it is success.

XII. Epilogue

So hear the ending, unofficial but accurate:

The nuisance is not the noise.
The nuisance is not the smell.
The nuisance is not the dust,
the vibration,
or the cracks in the wall.

The photos. The videos. The local knowledge. The offers of help.

It was never enough, and it was all too much.

The nuisance is the person
who notices, records, reports, follows up —
and unreasonably refuses to disappear.

The system does not silence the problem.

It waits for the problem
to silence itself.

Please complete this form.

Official reporting links:

• Report a noise nuisance (020 8825 8111) • Investigating your complaint (logging sheets) • Dust and odours from commercial premises (statutory nuisance test) • Report an air pollution problem (020 8825 8111) • Industrial pollution control (pollution-technical@ealing.gov.uk) • Southall Gasworks: Air monitoring (sniff tests) • Southall Gasworks: Reporting concerns (OdourCollect/email) • When you become the nuisance

Please note that complaints@ealing.gov.uk does not exist.