Evidence that just because streets were deserted during the Covid-19 pandemic "lockdown" it didn't mean all was quiet on the home front comes from the recently published CIEH annual Noise Survey for 2020/21. The survey of 144 Local Authorities (45% of the total) showed that noise complaints increased by 54% and that this increase appears to map with the requirement for people to stay at home. Over 11,000 formal actions were taken by the authorities that responded to the survey and the average number of complaints dealt with per full time professional environmental health officer more than doubled from 299 to 633 (London was the outlier at over 1,700 per officer). The CIEH points out that the number of EHOs employed to deal with and resolve noise complaints across the 144 responding authorities worked out at only 4 individuals per authority.

Anti-social Behaviour laws were the most commonly used legislation in dealing with the majority of these complaints and London, Yorkshire and the North East were the worst affected regions in terms of caseload. In total there were over 115,000 residential noise complaints (the highest single source of complaints during the period) across the 144 councils . Concrete evidence perhaps that it really is the case that "Hell is other people"?