Wirral Council<\/a> served the couple with a noise abatement notice in 2023 after the local authority received a number of complaints from those living nearby. The local authority said some neighbours had since moved.<\/p>\nThe council alleges breaches of the notice had taken place in 2024 on April 16, April 24, as well as between April 21 and 23, and April 25 and 29 and relied on evidence from Wirral Council technical officer Paul Bratley, recordings from a device placed in one home, as well as two neighbours Barry Heayns and Annette Owen.<\/p>\n
However Mrs McGuigan said the dogs did not bark all day, telling the court: \u201cWe didn\u2019t think it was such an issue with our dogs. We feel they were being antagonised to a certain degree.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mum of two said the area around St David Road was a busy one for dogs and a number of kelpies, an Australian sheep dog breed, at a property on Ferry Road was contributing to dog noise in the area. She also claimed one of their neighbours worked from home and had never had an issue.<\/p>\n
Mrs McGuigan told the court: “We do not believe it is a problem or at the level that people are assuming there is. We have not been provided with any definitive proof that all of this dog noise has happened from our property.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cI think certain people are oversensitive to the noise around them,\u201d adding: \u201cI think some people believe they have been caused disturbance by our dogs. I am not sure there is this nuisance from our dogs.\u201d<\/p>\n
While she accused some neighbours of blowing whistles and a vuvuzela to provoke her animals, she said: \u201cAt the end of the day, life is short. There is no reason to hold a grudge and keep a fridge. We are on the earth for a very short time and sometimes it is cut short,\u201d adding: \u201cI know it seems really stupid but you have to turn the other cheek in life.\u201d<\/p>\n
She suggested some neighbours had been misled and disputed testimony from council officer Mr Bratley, adding: \u201cI believe he has brought with him an unconscious bias.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Bratley has been a technical officer at Wirral Council since 2004 and with the local authority since 1982. He told the court he believed from his observations due to the direction and level of the noise that it came from the McGuigan\u2019s property and his professional opinion was it was a statutory noise nuisance.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cI could see them barking. I do not know what was causing them to bark,\u201d adding in his opinion the noise was unreasonable and things had not improved since the notice.<\/p>\n
Barrister Kyra Badman on behalf of Wirral Council also defended the officer, who told the court: \u201cHe has no axe to grind. He is simply doing his job.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said it was a straightforward case, that the idea neighbours would get up at 5am to set dogs off \u201cupsetting their own standard of living is simply farcical,\u201d and Mr McGuigan from his answers \u201cis not somebody interested in the welfare of his neighbours.\u201d<\/p>\n
The prosecution provided a number of recordings, which were played in court of dogs barking in the area with the council arguing their evidence pointed towards the noise coming from the McGuigans\u2019 property.<\/p>\n
These recordings also picked up sound before the device was triggered to record any dogs barking. This the council said was evidence challenging the claims the dogs were being deliberately set off.<\/p>\n
When asked by defence lawyer Ben Stanley if the reason for her complaint was because she did not like the defendants, Mrs Owen said she did not mind them, adding: \u201cI just want some peace and quiet.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judgement on the case was deferred to December 10 at Liverpool Magistrates Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One neighbour said she just wanted peace and quietLayla McGuigan said she did not believe their dogs caused…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":590388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,30,41148,393,4884,179,16,15,8881,9313],"class_list":{"0":"post-590387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-eastham","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-liverpool","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wirral","17":"tag-wirral-council"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115603652607543972","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/590388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Layla](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/0_Layla-and-Stephen-McGuigan-outside-Sefton-Magistrates-Court.jpg\")
Layla McGuigan said she did not believe their dogs caused a nuisance(Image: Liverpool Echo)<\/p>\n