Elton John complaints

Press, 29 February 1984, Page 9

Elton John complaints

Elton John concert noise complaints have prompted the Christchurch City Council to consider tightening its Sunday entertainment permits. The Addington Showgrounds concert earlier this month went an hour past the time the Canterbury A and P Association had requested for a permit. During that time after 10.30 p.m. the council received 84 per cent of the complaints made about the concert, said the Chief City Health Inspector, Mr A. P. Millthorpe, yesterday. The council’s community services and health committee said that future permits for Sunday entertainment should make a clear requirement on the occupier of a premises to provide someone to ensure that the sound did not exceed permitted levels, and that the function was limited to times approved by the permit. Cr Rex Lester, the committee’s chairman, said the council was not being

heavy-handed in its approach: “We are suggesting parameters people should act within,” he said. Control officers responding to a complaint made about noise after a permitted time could presumably ask occupiers to stop a concert, said Cr Lester. Cr Anne Evans asked whether an audience could be deprived of an hour’s entertainment they had paid for simply because a concert went past the permitted time. Cr H. A. Clark said it was important for the council to show it was consistent in its approach to concert noise as well as neighbourhood noise.

Mr Millthorpe said it was “not possible to lay down specific conditions for this type of entertainment, at any location within an urban area, that would exclude some degree of complaint, and it is necessary to achieve a reasonable balance between opposing public demand.”