Guide
Commercial Kitchen Extractor Fan Noise Complaints
A neighbour has complained about our extract fan. What happens now?
The local authority has a duty to investigate. If an environmental health officer decides the noise is a statutory nuisance, the council must serve an abatement notice, and there are 21 days to appeal it. Breaching that notice without reasonable excuse is a criminal offence. Acting before the notice arrives is cheaper than acting after it.
What can the council actually do?
More than most operators expect, and it moves faster than a planning dispute. Under Part III of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, noise emitted from premises so as to be prejudicial to health or a nuisance is a statutory nuisance, and a local authority has a duty to inspect its area for it and to investigate complaints.
| Stage | What it means |
|---|---|
| The notice | If the council is satisfied a statutory nuisance exists, section 80 requires it to serve an abatement notice. The notice can require the nuisance to be abated, prohibit or restrict it, or require specified works, and it has to state the time by which that is done. |
| The appeal | There are 21 days from service to appeal to a magistrates’ court. That window is short, it is the only one, and it closes whether or not the equipment has been looked at. |
| The offence | Contravening the notice without reasonable excuse is a criminal offence. For industrial, trade or business premises the penalty in section 80(6) is stated simply as a fine, with no ceiling written into the section for England and Wales. |
| Works in default | Under section 81 the council can abate the nuisance itself and recover what it reasonably spent doing so. At that point the work happens on the council’s terms and the invoice arrives afterwards. |
A complaint is not a nuisance and an officer visit is not a notice. Most of these end at the first stage, and what decides it is usually whether the operator did anything between the two.
What a noise complaint has actually cost an operator
Rugby Borough Council prosecuted the operator of a Chinese takeaway after a neighbour in the flat above complained about the extract fan. The figures were published by the council.
- £880 fine for failing to comply with the abatement notice
- £352 victim surcharge
- £6,327 council costs
The technical findings say more than the figures do. Officers found the fan’s lowest mounts had anti-vibration measures fitted, the middle mounts were loose and coming away from the wall, and the top mounts had been fixed directly to the wall with no anti-vibration measures at all. The magistrates heard that fitting anti-vibration measures to the top mounts would have been straightforward and relatively inexpensive.
An abatement notice was served in August 2022. Work was arranged, and afterwards the noise and vibration increased. The operator admitted to officers that she had failed to employ a competent engineer, and could not supply details of who had done the work or what work had been carried out. Conviction followed at Coventry Magistrates’ Court in January 2024.
The cheapest possible fix was available at the start. What turned it into a five figure outcome was eighteen months, one unqualified repair, and no record of what had been done.
Why is the extractor fan so noisy?
Extraction noise is almost never the air. It is metal moving against metal, or a fan handing its vibration to the building, and that is good news for the operator because it means it is fixable rather than inherent.
| Cause | What it sounds like | What resolves it |
|---|---|---|
| Anti-vibration mounts missing, loose or bridged | A drone or hum felt through the wall as much as heard | Refit or replace the mounts. The cheapest item on this table and the most common single cause. |
| Rigid connection between fan and ductwork | The whole duct run singing, often loudest in a room nowhere near the fan | Flexible connectors at the fan, so vibration stops at the fan instead of travelling the building. |
| Worn or dry bearings | A rumble or a rising whine that was not there last year | Bearing replacement. It gets louder until it seizes, so this one has a deadline of its own. |
| Impeller out of balance | A beat or throb, worse at full speed | Clean and rebalance. Grease building unevenly on an impeller is enough to do it. |
| No attenuation on the discharge | Broadband rush from the outlet, carrying to whatever the outlet faces | An attenuator in the run, or turning the discharge away from the boundary. |
| Fan working harder than it should | Everything louder than it used to be, with no single new noise | Loaded filters and a greased duct raise resistance. Cleaning the system can lower the noise without touching the fan. |
Why is it only a problem at night?
Because the complaint is about the difference, not the level. A fan that disappears under traffic and voices at seven in the evening is the loudest thing on the street at one in the morning, and it has not changed at all. Two things make kitchen extraction particularly good at this: a run-on that keeps the fan going long after service, and the fact that the person complaining is trying to sleep rather than trying to work.
It is also why the fix is often scheduling rather than engineering. A run-on set to the time the kitchen genuinely needs, and a fan speed that matches the load instead of running flat out from opening to close, can close a complaint on their own.
What actually fixes extraction noise?
Roughly in this order. The first two resolve more complaints than the other four combined, and both are cheap enough that starting anywhere else is hard to justify.
- Fit or renew anti-vibration mounts, and check nothing bridges them
- Fit flexible connectors either side of the fan
- Clean the system and rebalance the impeller
- Replace worn bearings rather than waiting for them
- Add attenuation, or change the discharge direction and height
- Fit speed control so the fan runs at the rate the kitchen needs
Replacing the fan is missing from that list on purpose. A new fan on the same mounts, connected to the same ductwork, in the same position, makes the same noise. Vibration transmission is a mounting problem and it survives new equipment.
Will a noise assessment be needed?
Sometimes, and more often where planning or a licence is involved than where a neighbour has complained. Assessments of this kind are normally carried out to BS 4142, which compares the sound the plant makes against the background sound level at the affected property rather than against a fixed number. Councils set their own criteria, so a figure quoted from another borough’s condition is not a target.
Acoustic assessment is a separate discipline and we do not carry it out. What we do is the mechanical half: mounts, connectors, bearings, balance, speed and discharge.
What to do in the first week
- Talk to the neighbour before the council does. A complaint that reaches environmental health has usually already been raised with you and ignored.
- Write down when the fan runs. Start and stop times, run-on setting, and any night the kitchen ran late. An officer will ask.
- Get the fan looked at by somebody competent, and keep the paperwork. The Rugby case turned on the absence of exactly this.
- Reply to the council in writing. Say what has been inspected, what was found and when the work is booked.
- If a notice arrives, diarise the 21 days that day. Appeal or comply, but decide inside the window.
Most extraction noise complaints are a mounting or a bearing, and both are ordinary maintenance items that were missed rather than faults that arrived. A system on a maintenance schedule tends not to reach the stage where somebody writes to the council. How a maintenance schedule catches this, and extraction repair when it already has.
Sources
- Environmental Protection Act 1990, Part III, statutory nuisances, sections 79, 80 and 81. Checked 16 August 2026: source
- Chinese takeaway fined for noisy extractor fan: fine, surcharge, costs and the anti-vibration findings. Checked 16 August 2026: source
- BS 4142, methods for rating and assessing industrial and commercial sound. Checked 16 August 2026: source