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“Gary Vickers, an Environmental health enforcement officer visited Mr Uddin’s house on 10th August (Sunday worship service time)  and on 12 August issued a letter to us saying that in his opinion, the volume from the music was of statutory noise nuisance level throughout the neighbours’ property. He suggested to deal with matter through sensible negotiation, informing our Pastor that ‘the church had to keep the noise down so as not to offend the Muslims living in the area’.  He told us ‘this is a Muslim borough, you have to tread carefully’.”

“Since then we have stopped using drums and further reduced our worship time to 20 minutes beginning from 11.30am on a Sunday morning. We have also restricted church services to once a week.  Despite all our action, Mr Uddin, who actually lives in what was the former Manse (vicarage) to the church, would stand at church’s main entrance door and shout his complaints and demand our Pastor come out to speak to him during his sermon.”

During August, IHOW took action.  They reduced hours of Sunday worship from 4 hours to 2 hours 30 mins, of which music is played for about 45 minutes.  They reduced their weekly services to one service on Sunday, and all mid-week services held are skeletal services without music.  Sunday evening services were reduced to once a month.  The Trustees also took the decision not to hire out the premises in case noise would aggravate Mr Uddin, a move which has cost the church additional revenue.  However, the visiting officer changed and questioning got more hostile.