Oxfordshire County Council Section 38 & 278 Agreements

Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) commonly require developers to submit noise surveys for Section 38 & 278 agreements in respect of road traffic noise. 

The requirements are relatively in-depth, entailing baseline noise surveys at the site, and computerised noise modelling of baseline and predicted future scenarios based on Transport Assessment data. 

Hepworth Acoustics has all the necessary expertise, experience and resources to complete these assessments on behalf of our clients.

However, we have also seen these requirements being commonly issued for smaller-scale developments, for which the full terms of OCC’s requirements seem disproportionate to the scale of development.

We have been able to agree with OCC an ‘overview’ style approach to the assessment. This can be carried out as a ‘screening’ assessment to determine whether the full scope of work is required, but has invariably proven to be sufficient to satisfy OCC with respect to Section 38 & 278 noise surveys.