The Government has underestimated the impact of traffic noise in rural areas, according to new research carried out for the Noise Association to test the robustness of quantitative assessments.

Country residents and visitors in areas across England, including those defined as ‘deep rural’ by the Government such as the Lake District, reported in interviews experiencing severe traffic noise, and disturbance up to two miles away from roads.

The interviews uncovered residents being deterred from using their gardens or having to keep their windows closed in the summer, and visitors discouraged from scenic locations.

The Noise Association urged the Department for Transport to revise its appraisal guidance for road schemes to advise that noise disturbance extends beyond the 300m area currently assumed.

It also called for a greater value to be placed on measures to cut rural noise. The association urged larger budgets, and targets for reducing noise from rural roads, claiming that many, such as weight restrictions, were ‘of high benefit, and relatively low cost’.

Some of the villages the research focused on were currently judged ineligible for amelioration measures. The Highways Agency, which manages most of the roads highlighted in the research, said it acknowledged that noise could be a problem further than 300m from roads, and the recent revision of the Design manual for roads and bridges encouraged wider assessments.

A spokeswoman for the HA denied that lowering speed limits would necessarily be low-cost, ‘taking into account the economic impact of reducing speeds’. Noise barriers or lower-noise road surfaces were usually ‘more viable’.

Lester Willmington, chair of the County Surveyors’ Society highways management working group, said ‘no local authority had a budget solely for retrofitting noise amelioration measures’.