Why a contractor applies
The alternative is waiting to be told. Without a consent, the council sets the terms only when it decides to act, usually after a resident has complained, and it does so by serving a notice that the contractor has had no part in drafting. The hours in that notice may be tighter than the programme assumed, and the programme is already priced.
A consent turns that round. The contractor proposes the working method, the plant, the hours and the noise limits, argues for the ones the job actually needs, and knows where it stands before the first breaker arrives. On a scheme with night work, a road closure or a piling rig, that certainty is worth more than the cost of the acoustic work needed to apply. Kensington and Chelsea, for instance, wants the application at least twenty-eight days before works start, ideally in draft first, and grants no consent once work has begun.
The part of the application that gets least attention is the part residents notice most. Councils ask what arrangements will be made for liaison with the people who live and work around the site, and the standard answer is a letter drop and a telephone number. Nobody at the council can check whether the letter was delivered, and nobody can check what happened to the calls.
What Section 61 says
Under section 61 of the Control of Pollution Act 1974, a person who intends to carry out works of the kind covered by section 60 may apply for consent, and where building regulations approval is needed the application must come at the same time as or after that request.
Subsection (3) says an application must contain particulars of the works and the method by which they are to be carried out, and of the steps proposed to minimise noise resulting from the works. Subsection (4) sets the test the council applies: if the application contains enough information, and the council would not serve a section 60 notice were the works carried out as described, it must give consent.
The council may attach conditions, limit or qualify the consent to allow for changed circumstances, and limit how long it lasts, and it must decide within twenty-eight days. Knowingly working in breach of a condition is an offence. If consent is refused, or granted with conditions the applicant objects to, or not decided in time, there is a right of appeal to a magistrates' court within twenty-one days. Two further duties are easy to miss: every consent has to carry a statement that it is not of itself a ground of defence against private statutory nuisance proceedings under section 82 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, and where someone other than the applicant carries out the works the applicant must take all reasonable steps to bring the consent to their notice.
What goes in the application
Boroughs publish their own lists, and they agree closely. Between them they ask for the contractor and any subcontractors, the site address with a plan showing which premises are likely to be affected, a week-by-week programme with a method statement for each stage, the proposed hours with a justification for anything outside the normal pattern, the plant with its sound power levels, the measures proposed under best practicable means, predicted noise levels at the nearest sensitive premises, the monitoring that will demonstrate compliance, and which residents will be told about the works.
The method statement is where the noise case is actually made. It has to explain not just what plant will be used but why a quieter method was not chosen, because the statutory test of best practicable means is defined in section 72 of the Act and the council must have regard to the approved code of practice for construction noise, British Standard 5228, approved for England by the Control of Noise (Code of Practice for Construction and Open Sites) (England) Order 2015.
What liaison with neighbours means in practice
Nothing in section 61 mentions neighbours. The liaison requirement comes from the councils, through their construction codes of practice and their application forms, and it is the least specified part of the process. Hammersmith and Fulham's contractor guidance for Section 61 applications is among the more detailed: it asks the applicant to notify local residents as early as possible, to cover the type of work, the reasons for it, its likely duration, the hours and the character of the noise, to keep a pro-forma letter on site for short-notice changes, and to publicise a telephone helpline for the duration of the works.
What the applicant hands in is a description of what they intend to do, and what happens afterwards is unverifiable by anyone. The letter either arrived or it did not, and the helpline was either answered or it rang out. When a resident telephones the council six weeks later, the officer has the application in front of them and no way of telling whether any of it was carried out. Our page on what neighbour liaison should look like on a Section 61 site sets out what each party in that situation can actually see.
How consent differs from a Section 60 notice
The difference is who writes the terms and when. A consent is applied for by the contractor before work starts, is negotiated, and takes effect because the council agrees the works as described would not warrant a notice. A notice under section 60 is imposed by the council on whoever is carrying out the works, can be served at any point once work appears imminent or is under way, and carries an appeal to a magistrates' court within twenty-one days of service. Our guide to Section 60 notices covers what one can require and how to answer it. The permitted hours either route produces are covered in our guide to building work hours.
Kensington and Chelsea
The borough assesses every site as category one, two or three by its potential impact before work starts, and its Code of Construction Practice requires a Section 61 application for category one sites. Its standard hours are tighter than most, and for a category one site it says the developer "must draw up a strategy for liaison with neighbours", which it calls one of the most important factors in minimising complaints. Its application form and guidance has seventeen headed items; item three, liaison, asks for arrangements with neighbours, businesses and schools and suggests newsletters, a hotline and, in its words, that a development "may even consider setting up a website".
Hammersmith and Fulham
The borough encourages consents on large or long schemes and on anything likely to need work outside normal hours, and asks for contact two months ahead with a draft application before the formal one. Its construction site noise pages give normal hours of eight in the morning to six in the evening on weekdays, eight to one on Saturdays and nothing on Sundays or bank holidays, and note that a commercial setting may justify different hours.
Bexley
Bexley publishes both a guidance note and the application route itself. Its contractor guidance for Section 61 applications says a consent will normally specify the method of working, the hours, the noise predictions and the controls to be applied under best practicable means, and that the monitoring regime has to be agreed with the council as part of the application. Its prior approval page carries the application itself.
Southwark
Southwark is the most direct about the consequence of not applying. Its page on applying to do noisy demolition or construction asks for an application at least twenty-eight days before works start and says that if you do not apply first the council will set your hours of work and the terms and conditions. It also runs a separate short-form consent for out-of-hours work on jobs lasting under eight weeks, which needs a stated reason.
Barnet
Barnet publishes general construction site guidance with permitted hours for audible work and directs contractors who need to work outside them to its environmental health team, granting that only in exceptional circumstances. Its published route is framed as an application for extended hours rather than as a Section 61 process, which is a reminder that the same statutory power is presented very differently from borough to borough.
What the consent cannot show
Every one of these applications ends with a promise about how the people around the site will be kept informed, and not one of them leaves behind anything that can be checked afterwards. The contractor cannot prove the letter went out. The resident cannot prove the helpline went unanswered. The officer holding the file cannot tell which of them is right, and has to spend an afternoon relaying a complaint that the site team would have dealt with in ten minutes. A shared, dated record of what was announced, what was reported and when it was resolved settles that for the contractor, the resident and the council at once, because all three are reading the same record. On Noisy Neighbour it costs £5 per site per week, and residents join free.
How Noisy Neighbour fits a Section 61 site
The site gets a public web page. A printable QR sheet goes on the hoarding, and scanning it opens the page, which shows the company doing the work, the hours that apply to that site and the notices coming up. There is no password and nothing for a resident to install. The page carries the company name and the hours, not a phone number, so where a borough asks for a telephone helpline the page sits alongside it rather than replacing it.
Notices are posted once by the site team, emailed to every resident who has joined the page, and shown on a calendar anyone with the link can see. They cover noisy work, deliveries, skips and waste collections, milestones such as the scaffold going up or coming down, and utility interruptions. That is the material a borough asks to see in a notification letter, except that it does not go out of date and a short-notice change reaches everyone the same day.
A resident reports a problem by choosing a category, describing it and adding a photo if it helps. The site team is notified straight away and replies in the same thread, and each issue records who raised it, when it was raised, when it was acknowledged, when it was resolved and whether the resident confirmed the fix, with the average response and resolution times shown on the page. That record is evidence of liaison a contractor can show a monitoring officer, and the same record serves a resident who says the site ignored them. It is not a substitute for anything the Act or the borough requires, and no council has any part in it. What it does for an environmental health team is on our page for councils and environmental health.