Technical Guidance to the NPPF

This document was published in March 2012 and provides detailed technical guidance on minerals policy and flood risk. Noise issues are covered in paragraphs 28 - 31 of the document. This section of the document discusses noise emissions from mineral workings, the procedures that should be adopted to assess and control noise, and provides detailed guidance on noise criteria.

The recommended noise criteria are divided in to two categories.

• The first category is for normal operations that are carried out on a day to day basis on site.
• The second set of noise criteria are for short term operations that cannot meet the criteria for normal operations.

Examples of these types of operation include soil-stripping, the construction and removal of baffle mounds, soil storage mounds and spoil heaps, construction of new permanent landforms and aspects of site road construction and maintenance.

It is recommended that higher limits for these operations should be limited to no more than 8 weeks in a year.

The noise criteria contained in the Technical Guidance are the same as those that were contained in the superseded MPS 2 Annex 2: Noise.