New Campaign for Peace & Quiet

Salisbury MP Robert Key has been elected Vice-Chairman of the new All Party Parliamentary Group for Noise Reduction. At the inaugural meeting on 20th April Jonathon Shaw, Labour MP for Chatham and Aylesford was elected Chairman.

Robert Key said, “Silence is golden. Every one of us suffers from noise in one form or another – noisy neighbours, noisy building works, noisy traffic, noisy aircraft, loud music with bass beats, and many more irritating distractions. Every MP is approached to help with these problems so we decided to get together to understand the issue better and to focus the attention of Parliament on the issues involved. We will meet noise experts, engineers and academics, we will host seminars and we will conduct enquiries into particular issues. We will also make visits to noisy sites if that is necessary. We aim to become a focus of expertise and our Secretariat will be provided by the United Kingdom Noise Association which has been established for many years.

Noise is as great a pollutant as environmental pollution or light pollution. It lowers our quality of life – and we will seek to reverse that.”
number of local residents.