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(39)
Much of the time of the Inspector for Factories and Smoke Abatement
has been taken up in investigating complaints of noise. Some of these
complaints are from individuals, but sometimes they take the form of
petitions from a number of residents. It is not surprising that with
the drive for increased production and exports, creating a good deal of
night work in some of our factories, that complaints have been received
regarding such things as noisy ventilating fans, heavy presses, electric
saws and squeaky bearings. In some cases noise is caused by newly installed
additional machinery still subject to final adjustments by the
contractora.
All these complaints are fully investigated,observations being made
by day or night as required. Where complaints are considered to be
justified a visit is paid to the mannagement concerned to seek remedies.
It can be recorded that as regards both these types and the other types
of nuisance from factories to which I have referred, ready co-operation
has always boen forthcoming. Defects are quickly remedied, experiments
are put in hand to minimise nuisance as far as possible and often the
re-arrangement either of the work or of the siting of offending pieces
of machinery is undertaken.
An example may be of interest, which concerns a machine being used
at night for the first time on urgent work after several years of day
use without complaint. The complaint that loss of sleep was being caused
was found to be justified. A late evening meeting was arranged between
the director of the firm and the Council's Inspector which resulted in
the party wall between the factory and the residence concerned being officiently
sound-proofed.