NEIGHBOURS are so fed up with noisy late-night music that they have inundated their council with complaints.

Middlesbrough Borough Council is so snowed under that it shelved plans to stop Friday night noise patrols shifts during the winter.

Environmental health officer Paul Robertson said: "Because winter months tend to be quieter than summer months, with the light nights, barbecues and parties, we tend to run the noise patrols only on a Saturday throughout the winter.

"Because we only have a finite amount of money we target the busiest times, but we have had to bring back the Friday night patrols by popular demand.

"We can speculate the weather is so bad people are staying in, getting friends round and partying. It certainly has been very busy."

He said they were trying to operate a responsive service to meet the needs of people.

A backlog, on average, of two to three calls on a Friday had meant the Saturday patrols had had to contend with nine to ten calls a shift, he said.

Last weekend was a "nightmare shift", the workload including disconnecting two burglar alarms, as well as dealing with complaints about loud music. Mr Robertson said: "They spent the entire evening responding to calls.''