Scrap dealer gets fine for loudspeaker noise

David Bennett from Blakenall Heath, Walsall, used the speakers as he picked up scrap metal from streets in Cannock.

Across Staffordshire and the Black Country, councils have reported increasing complaints about the noise of tatters' bugles.

Bennett, of Thames Road, was taken through the courts by Cannock Chase Council.

The 29-year-old was ordered to pay a fine of £75, along with a victim surcharge of £15 and costs of £100.

He admitted using a loudspeaker in the streets on August 5 last year when he appeared before Stafford Magistrates last week.

The council's environmental health team said it regularly received complaints about the use of loudspeakers on scrap collecting vehicles.

It said they caused unnecessary disturbance to residents.

Councillor Janos Toth, deputy leader of the council, said: "Noise nuisance can have a detrimental impact on local people's lives.

"Scrap metal dealers do provide a valuable service for people in Cannock Chase district but we receive lots of complaints from residents who are sick and tired of hearing bugles and other amplified sounds from some vehicles."

He said it was the council's second successful prosecution for this type of offence and where theyhad evidence they would take action.

It is an offence to use a recording of a voice or a bugle played through a loudspeaker to advertise scrap collection in the street and those responsible may face fines of up to £5,000.

In September last year, a noisy scrap dealer was hit with a bill of almost £400 by courts. John Evans of Foxglove Walk, Hednesford, admitted a charge of noise pollution in Stafford's Baswich area.

Leigh Collingridge, for the authority, said a council environmental officer had heard a "loud trumpet-like noise through a loudspeaker" played continually from a pick-up truck in Torrington Avenue on June 23, 2012.

Evans was ordered to pay a £100 fine and £295 court costs.

In a letter read out to the court he said he had stopped sounding the horn.

But he pointed out that ice cream vans were also noisy yet were never stopped.

Last June, three scrap metal dealers – from Bilston, Wednesbury and Walsall – were fined in Stafford for similar offences.