The audience at an awards night arrives hours after the crew and leaves hours before them. The sound engineer, the lighting technician, the stewards on the barrier and the photographer have been in that room since the build. Noise at work events is a duty that attaches to the loudest room in the building, and it is easy to treat as somebody else’s paperwork. The rules are short, and they do not protect the people most organisers would expect.
In short
- The Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 protect people who are at work, so your crew and your stewards are covered and your audience is not.
- Three thresholds do the work: 80 decibels, 85 decibels and an 87 decibel limit.
- The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) still publishes recommended levels for audience areas, even though no law sets one.
- Much of the exposure is settled by the seating plan and the schedule rather than at the sound desk.
Who owns noise at work events
The Regulations put the duty on an employer for its own workers, one employer at a time, which is how it ends up owned by nobody. At a hired-in event, the audio visual (AV) supplier holds it for its technicians, the venue for its own staff, the caterer for the people clearing tables beside a loudspeaker stack, and the security company for the stewards on the barrier. Four employers, one acoustic space, four separate assessments.
The organiser’s job is the part between them. Getting contractors to co-operate and co-ordinate is something we have written about in more detail elsewhere, and noise is a clear case for it, because sound does not respect the boundary between one company’s risk assessment and another’s.
This is not the question of whether the room sounds any good. That is about intelligibility, and we wrote about it when we looked at sound in a room full of cutlery.
Three thresholds, and what each one starts
Regulation 4 sets three points on a scale, measured as a daily or weekly personal exposure. The decibel figures are A-weighted, meaning filtered to match human hearing, with a separate C-weighted figure for sudden peaks.
At 80 decibels, or a C-weighted peak of 135, the employer must assess the risk and give its people information and training. At 85 decibels, or a peak of 137, it must provide hearing protection and mark hearing protection zones, and the Regulations require hearing checks for workers regularly exposed above that level. At 87 decibels, or a peak of 140, no worker may be exposed above the limit, and that third figure counts the reduction hearing protection gives. The first two do not.
The Regulations came into force for all industry sectors in Great Britain in April 2006, and for the music and entertainment sectors two years later, in April 2008. The UK Hearing Conservation Association is direct about what that leaves: while music is not noise, the same regulations apply to the sector as to any other workplace.
Your audience is not covered, and that is not the same as being safe
The HSE puts it plainly: “Unlike workers, there is no specific legislation setting noise limits for the audience exposure to noise.” Your delegates are not your employees, and the Regulations do not put a duty for them on you.
What the HSE does instead is publish numbers anyway. Its recommendation is that the A-weighted average level across the whole event, which it calls the Event LAeq, should not exceed 107 decibels in any part of the audience area, and that C-weighted peaks should stay under 140. It also asks organisers to warn people in advance, for example on tickets, in advertising or on notices at entry points, where that event average is likely to go past 96 decibels.
The loudest position in the room is not the mixing desk
The HSE’s practical line is that, where practical, the audience should not be allowed within 3 metres of any loudspeaker, with barriers and stewards used to hold that separation. Consider who spends a whole evening inside 3 metres of a loudspeaker stack: a steward working the barrier, a photographer shooting the front, and waiting staff clearing a table that ended up there on the seating plan. None of them chose their position acoustically.
The HSE asks that during the sound check, the difference in sound level between the front-of-house mixing position, the desk out in the room, and the front-of-stage barrier is established. Then the operator can mix to what the front row is getting.
The decisions that fix this happen weeks earlier
These are layout and scheduling decisions, and they arrive at the sound desk already made.
- Where the loudspeakers go and which way they point, which follows from the room and the sightlines.
- Where the barrier line and the front row of tables sit relative to those positions.
- How long the room is live, because exposure is level and duration together.
- How long the rehearsal and sound check run, because the crew take those on top of the show itself.
- Whether anything fires. The HSE asks that noise from pyrotechnics does not exceed a C-weighted peak of 140 decibels at head height in the audience area.
- Who else is in the room during the build.
This is the same argument we make about splitting a supply chain. Audio, lighting and staging bought from three companies means three assessments and three sets of assumptions about how long the room is live. One supplier does not remove the duty. It does mean there is somebody to ask.
What to settle before the get-in
The get-in, the window when equipment comes into the building, is too late to start this. Five questions, put in writing when the brief goes out, cover the ground, and most of them belong in the same document as everything else your supplier needs from you.
- Who has assessed noise for this event, and whether that assessment covers people who are not their own employees.
- What the expected level is at the front of the audience, not at the mixing position.
- Where hearing protection is available on site, and who tells the stewards and the waiting staff.
- How long each crew is scheduled to be in the room, including the build and the de-rig, which is the part where the show comes back down.
- Who has authority to bring the level down during the show, and who they answer to.
An event where nobody can name that last person has not made a decision about noise.
Frequently asked questions
Do we need a noise assessment for a one-day conference?
That depends on the level in the room and how long each crew is in it. Speech reinforcement in a main session is unlikely to reach the 80 decibel threshold over a working day. An evening party with a live band, or a long build with loud testing, changes the answer. Ask your supplier what the room is expected to run at and for how long.
Should we give the audience hearing protection?
No law requires it, because the Regulations cover people at work rather than guests. What the HSE does ask is that the audience is warned in advance where the event average is likely to exceed 96 decibels. Offering protection at the door is a reasonable step at a loud party. At a conference or an awards dinner, our view is that keeping the front tables away from the loudspeakers does more.
Sources
- Health and Safety Executive · Noise at events
- Health and Safety Executive · The Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005
- legislation.gov.uk · The Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005, regulation 4
- UK Hearing Conservation Association · Music and entertainment
If you have an event where the room will be loud for a long day, we are happy to go through where the loudspeakers can sit and which of your suppliers should hold which part of this. We supply audio, lighting, rigging and staging from one source and deliver nationwide from Manchester. You can reach us through the contact page or by email at hire@eventproductiongroup.co.uk, and if the honest answer is that your event does not need to think about this, we will tell you that instead.
