Birkenhead: “Ding dong” due to the “too loud” bell on the clock tower

The council decided to break a 137-year-old tradition and limit the chimes on the city’s clock tower to one hour at a time after a noise complaint from a nearby resident.

Birkenhead Town Hall’s bells now ring hourly instead of every 15 minutes because a man who lives nearby complained they were ringing too loud and too often.

Wirral Council said in a statement that the time was changed after its own environmental health inspector deemed the sounds to be “statutory nuisance noise”.

But heritage campaigner Philip Barton said many locals love the regular bells and “live their lives around them”.