London Battersea Heliport Noise Subjective Survey

A subjective survey in the form or an online survey questionnaire was designed and implemented to collect information on the perceptions and attitudes of local residents from noise emissions from the London heliport operation. The subjective study was intended to complement the objective study (reported in a separate document) and to allow a comparison of findings between the two. The questionnaire opened on 11 th July 2017 and closed on 30 th September 2017. It collected responses to mostly closed ended question from the boroughs of Wandsworth, Hammersmith and Fulham (H&F), Kensington and Chelsea (K&C). The survey questionnaire obtained a high (N=1570) participation rate. The level of annoyance caused by helicopter noise reported by respondents appears higher than the level of annoyance attributed to noise measurements at monitoring sites (see noise monitoring survey report). However it is important to note that many non-acoustical factors (such as location time of the day, socio economic factors) may influence when expressing attitudes and perception (annoyance). The proportion of respondents highly annoyed (%) by helicopter noise in this study was much higher than the proportion of highly annoyed to aircraft noise reported in a similar survey responded in 2014 by residents living around English airports. The current complaint handling and recording system appears to be ineffective and underrepresent the true scale of the impact on affected residents of the noise emissions from the heliport operation.