Kicking up a stink: The nation’s most hated smells revealed

Every person living in the UK has the right to complain about a bad odour to their local council. And it seems thousands of us are flexing that right every year.

In fact, in five years, UK councils received an eye-watering – or nose-tickling – 114,411 nuisance smell complaints.

But what smells do Brits take the most offence to? Is it manure? Sewage? Waste centres? No, it’s their own neighbours!

The home fragrance experts at Lifestyle Packaging asked 335 UK councils what whiffs were the most complained about by local residents and surprisingly, Brits are more likely to lodge a formal complaint against their neighbours than anything else:

In the UK, “Domestic Property” was the most common smell complaint category overall and made up the majority of complaints in South Ayrshire; Hastings; Knowsley; Dartford; Forest of Dean; Newark and Sherwood; Blaenau Gwent and West Dunbartonshire.

Neighbours’ homes and gardens were responsible for a whole manner of weird and wonderful odours which were deemed by councils to be “statutory nuisances”.

Some councils were even able to give the horrifying details of some odour complaints. From “a neighbour urinating in his own doorway” in Daventry, “bins full of cat poo” in Rushcliffe, to “over forty rabbits living in one garden” in Erewash, it’s no wonder these residents contacted the council.

The same can’t be said, however, about one complaint over “a neighbour’s excessive spraying of air freshener” in Stafford. It seems some neighbours can smell too good.

According to the UK Government, a “statutory nuisance” means a smell interferes with the use or enjoyment of a home or other premise, or if it injures health. Believe it or not, councils often send out human “sniffers” to assess smell complaints, and ask local residents to keep “smell diaries”, recording their perception of the smell and the effect it has on them.

Councils can also issue an abatement notice to the person responsible, demanding they take steps to stop the smell nuisance. Failure to comply with an abatement notice can lead to a maximum fine of £40,000.

Second on the list of the UK’s most-hated smells is agricultural, including farms, farmyard animals and muck-spreading – the practice of spraying fields with liquid manure. Residents in the Welsh borders, East Midlands, Devon and Kent were the most likely to be peeved off by the pong of farms.

There are strict rules around muck spreading to avoid manure coming into contact with humans, but the unpleasant odour can spread for miles, plaguing some rural communities. As well as being extremely stinky, animal manure is also key source of ammonia, a powerful pollutant that can lodge deep in the lungs, harming people’s health.

The good news is the Government is clamping down on the practice of muck spreading on farms as part of its Environment Bill 2020 to improve the nation’s air quality.

Smoky bonfires were another big annoyance, coming in third place overall. People living in

Chichester, Ashford, North Norfolk, Teignbridge and Swansea were most likely to complain about domestic or garden waste burning.

In England and Wales, there is no law against bonfires but it is against the law to cause a nuisance to neighbours.