Bagpipes are among sounds that prompted noise complaints in Tauranga. Photo / 123rf
Bagpipes are among sounds that prompted noise complaints in Tauranga. Photo / 123rf
Bagpipes. Bad singing. Death metal. Screaming kids. Power tools.
These are among the sounds that have stoked the ire of Tauranga residents enough to call noise control over the past three years, with Pāpāmoa revealed as the suburb with more complaints than any other.
And an expert says the fast-growing area’s “urban sprawl” resulting from the pursuit of the Kiwi home-and-land “dream” on ever-shrinking sections may be to blame.
Tauranga City Council data released to the Bay of Plenty Times under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act showed in 2023 to October, 991 noise complaints came from people in Pāpāmoa.
In 2022, overall the suburb attracted 1251 complaints and 1390 in 2021.
Neighbouring Mount Maunganui followed close behind with 658 complaints in the first 10 months of 2023, , 1001 in 2022 and 1413 in 2021.
Citywide, complaints totalled 4187 for the partial 2023 year, compared with 5575 in 2022 and 6619 in 2021.
Loud music, alarms, machinery, and people — especially children — were among the most common reasons for noise grievances in Tauranga last year, with music featuring in at least 3281 of the complaints.
Among the more unusual reasons for complaints last year were a live death-metal band, chugging, kids screaming, and “planes flying”.
In previous years, bagpipes, basketballs bouncing all day, a church group, karaoke or bad singing, and “homeless singing out front” incited complaints.
University of Waikato lecturer in environmental planning Carolyn Hill said fast-growing Pāpāmoa’s “quintessential urban sprawl” could be a significant reason for its many noise complaints.
“People are trying to fit more houses into the same area.”
Hill said when people lived in close quarters with one another such as in apartments, there tended to be greater consideration for neighbours. There was a “social contract”, particularly with noise, she said.
By comparison, Pāpāmoa was a suburb of mainly stand-alone single homes, and despite shrinking section sizes people would tend to behave as they would in a home on a larger site.
“What we are seeing in Pāpāmoa is a cookie-cutter approach to the status quo of the New Zealand vernacular — let’s keep to our New Zealand ideals of a single house, own little space of land, sprawled along long wide streets,” Hill said.
Pāpāmoa's housing layout is considered to be one reason for the beachside suburb recording Tauranga's highest number of noise control complaints.
“While Pāpāmoa development is trying to prioritise a measure of the New Zealand dream, it’s actually creating, perpetuating and exacerbating problems that are associated with that style of development.”
Noise issues were a prime example, especially as traditional property sizes reduced, resulting in more houses closer together, she said.
“Those houses are still trying to do everything as we’ve always done as big houses … but in trying to achieve that, we are emphasising the problems of people living close together but still in separate places.”
Hill said New Zealand’s Building Code offered minimum standards but no aspirational ones when it came to mitigating noise.
“Noise is a real thing. It has been researched to be one of the things that affects people badly on a daily basis if noise is a problem in their daily environment.
“It’s something we really need to take seriously,” Hill said.
Increased higher-density housing would help to “shift the dial” because it tended to create a “collectivism” in culture. It also lowered the cost of infrastructure, she said.
Hill said Tauranga’s closest example of higher-density housing was most likely in Mount Maunganui, where there were more apartment blocks and higher storeys.
Carolyn Hill is a lecturer in environmental planning at the University of Waikato. Photo / Supplied
Council acting general manager for regulatory and compliance Nigel McGlone said it was not possible to determine what factor housing density played in noise control complaints.
The council was also unable to answer, in any meaningful way, how it expected government pressure to create higher-density housing could affect noise control complaints due to a lack of statistical analysis.
Under the previous government’s National Policy Statement for Urban Development (NPS-UD), councils were encouraged to make room for growth “up” and “out” with rules that did not unnecessarily constrain growth.
Other new density rules required councils such as Tauranga to increase housing supply and apply new Medium Density Residential Standards allowing up to three buildings of up to three storeys high on most sites without resource consent. The National Party initially backed this change but later pulled its support and vowed to change the rules.
Locally, the council has focused on intensifying key areas such as Te Papa to help the city cope with its ballooning population — expected to exceed 182,000 by 2033, up from about 137,000 in 2018. New growth areas were also being developed.
“New growth areas like Tauriko West are expected to have much-higher densities than existing areas at an average of 25-30 dwellings a hectare compared to existing areas like Pāpāmoa or The Lakes, which are more like 12-15 dwellings/ha,” McGlone said.
“Also, existing parts of the city like Te Papa are expected to see higher densities through terraced housing and apartment-type development.”
McGlone said the council, as a building consent authority, could not enforce noise mitigation provisions above the minimum requirements of the Building Code.
In 2023 to October, the council issued 388 excessive noise direction warnings, three abatement notices, nine infringement notices and 18 seizure notices.
Kiri Gillespie is an assistant news director and a senior journalist for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post, specialising in local politics and city issues. She was a finalist for the Voyager Media Awards Regional Journalist of the Year in 2021.
