Littlehampton’s noisy station leaves couple ‘sleep deprived’

Amanda Lannon, of Gloucester Road, has lived next to the railway station for about five years and said for most of that time the noise has not been an issue, apart from a brief period in 2011.

However, the retired 60-year-old said that in recent months the noise coming from the platforms of the station, as well as trains parked there overnight, has grown louder.

Mrs Lannon said: “When I moved to Gloucester Road in 2009, the station was not a problem – some of their customers were occasionally, but the station was relatively quiet.

“No more. I can’t move. I have my windows open because I believe in fresh air.

“I also have asthma and I cough a lot. If I’m in a stuffy room I cough even more.

“But all the noise coming from the station now makes it impossible to sleep some nights.”

She added: “I am now deprived of sleep which causes other health issues on top of exacerbating the very present ones.”

On top of this, Mrs Lannon claims the problem with the noisy platform announcements is compounded by a number of commercial trains arriving and parking at the site throughout the night, with the engines running.

“We also spend many sleepless nights disturbed by a particular train which parks up for the night at 9.30pm leaving its engine on,” she said. “It clicks rapidly and revs every two to three minutes, thereby making sleep impossible.

“It’s Chinese torture. This goes on until morning when it takes off at approximately 7am.”

Mrs Lannon says she has attempted to contact the railway operator, Southern, on several occasions since November but with little success.

She said that after sending numerous emails and phone calls to Southern’s customer services department, she finally received a response from the railway operator, apologising for the inconvenience suffered.

Southern asked them to record the time of each incident so it could then conduct an investigation.

However, Mrs Lannon’s husband Keith felt that he should not need to spend his evening documenting every instance of noise nuisance.

He said: “It’s like complaining that there is a dog having a poo on my garden every night and the council asking me if I could make a note of every time that happens. I shouldn’t have to do this.”

A spokeswoman for Southern said there had been no change in noise or the number of trains arriving at the station. She said: “There hasn’t been a specific change in announcements – the last one is due just after 10pm – or train movements at the station recently but local staff are monitoring this and an engineer is due to visit to review the equipment volumes.”

Mrs Lannon said she was not one to normally complain and that she understood living next to a railway station could be noisy.

However, she said she wanted to see action taken by Southern to reduce the loud announcements and stop trains parking overnight with their engines running.