Sound equipment siezed from student home

Three Leeds University students of Chestnut Grove, Headingley have recently had all of their sound equipment seized by the council after complaints about loud music from their neighbours.   Three complaints regarding noise level were made to the council before officers served a ‘noise abatement order’, which warned that a failure to keep the noise down in future would be a criminal offence. However, after a third complaint was made. Council workers with Police support confiscated the items during the early hours.  Altogether 13 items were seized including 4 TV’s, I-pod docking stations, DVD players, laptops and a hard drive.  The students who wished to remain anyomous when talking to Leeds Student believe the situation to have been “blown out of proportion” and also felt that the confiscation of their laptops and hard drives is affecting their studies.  One of the three students is aspiring to publish his photo collection, but explains that all of his photos are on the hard drive. They say they “it has been blown out of proportion” and they are made to “look like a criminal”. When Leeds Student spoke to neighbours who filed the complaints who are students themselves,  they asserted that they “wished it hadn’t come to this”.  They added that they ignored the loud music several times as well as going around discussing the matter with the students before calling the council. The students told Leeds Student all they wanted was for the music to be turned down at night so they could sleep, “not for their stuff to be taken”.  However, there is also a disagreement concerning whether the noise level is the real problem or whether it is actually the type of music they are playing. The neighbours admitted that the fact that the music was metal was partly what disturbs them. One of the complainants stated, “The type of music they played is not something that you could get to sleep to”.  However, as the students stated: “We went around to apologise to our neighbours after we’d had a few friends around, which is when they told us it was our taste in music that was the problem”.  A spokesman from the council confirmed with Leeds Student that in total three complaints had been made for the council choose to intervene and confiscate items.  Councillor Tom Murray further stated that “Residents should be able to live their lives without their sleep being disrupted by neighbours making excessive and unnecessary noise.”  The council are also attempting to prosecute the students for a breach of the noise abatement notice. If they are found guilty, the council will then apply for a forfeiture order to keep all seized equipment.