It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to our dear friend Jack Pease who is retiring this month after 23 years of publishing his Noise (and Air Quality) Bulletin. He has always been a good friend to SAS. writing articles about many of our members’ highs and lows with noisy turbines. We will miss his brand of technical but easy to read journalism mixed with his unique sense of humour. All the best Jack!
The publications had a loyal following but numbers have nosedived – first austerity and more recently Covid and Ukraine has taken its toll on the market into which the newsletters are sold.
Our core market is local authority environmental health teams – these have been hit particularly hard over the last decade with more cuts to come. Many local authorities no longer have any noise expertise and lean on consultants if they get caught out.
In our announcement in sister journal Air Quality Bulletin I commented that I was content that cleaner vehicles meant that air quality problems were largely solved. The same is not true of noise which remains the ‘forgotten’ pollutant.
Unlike air quality, noise was never put into regulation and local authorities were left to get on with it. Attempts to deal with it centrally (eg Defra noise mapping) failed. Wales and Scotland have taken it more seriously but the tiny team left at Defra are hamstrung.
Nuisance management at local authority level has sunk to diary sheets and the Noiseapp which neatly distracts from the fact that many local authorities no longer have environmental health officers to listen to nuisance and make an expert judgement.
The holding company for the newsletters (EMP ltd) will be dissolved at the end of the month so if you feel you are due a refund and haven’t responded to past messages you need to move fast.
The email and website will continue operating for the foreseeable future. It is my intention to make the entire Noise Bulletin archive freely available for perpetuity. Details will be put on the website.
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