Criterion HS111#

#All practicable steps are taken to ensure that noise levels do not unduly interfere with normal speech and/or communication or cause any child attending distress or harm.

Guidance #

How to show you are complying#

To support children’s wellbeing and communication, you must take all practicable steps to make sure noise levels do not unduly interfere with normal speech or cause distress or harm. This applies to: 

• indoor areas such as activity rooms, sleep rooms, and shared spaces
• outdoor environments like playgrounds, verandas, and transition zones. 

It’s important to consider both settings when assessing and managing noise. 

You can take practicable steps to address noise levels when designing or modifying your service and when it is operating. These steps can relate to noise levels affecting your service from: 

• activity outside your service such as road traffic and neighbouring activity
• activity within your service such as children and air conditioning equipment.

Noise from the service that could potentially affect neighbouring sites is not considered under this criterion, as it falls under the Resource Management Act 1991.

Design and modification

Good planning and thoughtful design can go a long way in minimising noise issues before they arise. Both noise levels and reverberation affect how well people can communicate. When designing or modifying your service environment, aim to minimise reverberation and prevent external noise from entering the space.

Reverberation is the persistence of sound in a space after the original sound source has stopped. It occurs when sound waves reflect off surfaces such as walls, ceilings, and floors, causing a prolonged echo effect. Excessive reverberation can interfere with clear communication, particularly in large or acoustically hard environments.

Some practical steps you can take to reduce environmental noise in outdoor areas (and in turn indoor areas) include:

• careful site selection to avoid noisier sites such as near busy roads, railways, airports or commercial and industrial activity
• strategic site layout to locate outdoor play areas where they are separated and screened from significant noise sources such as roads
• use of solid fencing or walls with no gaps to act as noise barriers.

Some practicable steps you can take to reduce noise in indoor areas include to: 

• locate access doors and opening windows where they are not exposed to environmental noise
• use a lobby, indirect or staggered access doors to reduce noise entering from outside
• provide a mechanical ventilation and temperature control system if doors and windows need to be kept closed to reduce noise entering from outside
• select/design any building services such as heat pumps or ventilation systems so that the noise they generate complies with appropriate limits inside (and affecting outdoor play areas)
• plan the building so sensitive spaces, such as sleeping rooms, do not have doors opening directly to noisier activity spaces
• use a roof and ceiling construction with solid layers sufficient to control rain noise
• use acoustic absorption materials such as ceiling tiles, carpets, curtains, soft furnishings, and acoustic panels
• design fixed furniture and fittings to reduce reflections between parallel walls and reverberation
• use soft-close doors and rubber stoppers.

Operation

The way you operate and manage your service is important to control noise levels. Some practicable steps you can take to reduce noise in indoor and outdoor areas include:

• manage group sizes and activities
• monitor and respond to noise levels
• schedule high-energy activities away from quiet zones
• limit background music and avoid amplified sound unless necessary
• establish clear expectations with children about acceptable noise indoors, supporting them to self-regulate in a developmentally appropriate way
• keep doors and windows closed if required to reduce outdoor noise entering the building
• maintain acoustic absorption materials and replace when required.

Monitor and manage noise levels#

After licensing, you should continue to monitor and manage noise levels. Changes such as increased enrolments, new activity programming, or nearby construction can all contribute to rising noise.

If these situations occur, consider:

• attempting to ascertain the length of time the noise might occur
• how the risks to children and adults will be mitigated
• how this information will be communicated to parents
• when it might be appropriate to temporarily relocate the centre.

Contact your regional Ministry of Education office to determine what steps would need to be taken in exceptional circumstances.

Regional offices

Specialist acoustic assessment

If you have concerns about noise levels inside or in the outside area of your service after you have taken practicable steps to manage noise levels, you could independently commission a specialist acoustic assessment. 

If you commission a specialist acoustics assessment and it certifies noise levels during all operating hours will not exceed World Health Organisation Guidelines for Community Noise 1999, this shows your design or modifications are sufficient.

WHO guidelines for community noise 1999

• LAeq [dB] – level for ‘A-frequency weighted’ sound averaged over a time period.
• LAFmax, fast [dB] – maximum sound level for ‘A-frequency weighted’ fast sound for a single sound event.

Any specialist acoustic assessments should be conducted when the service is unoccupied but replicating operating conditions such HVAC operating and when environmental noise levels are at their highest. This is because each child could be in an environment for different times and durations. For example, a child might only be in an outdoor play area during peak times when it is noisiest, which would represent their exposure for the timeframe ‘during play’. 

To protect children’s health and safety, measure the noise during the loudest 15 minutes (such as rush hour traffic or what is specific to your context), without averaging these measurements over the whole day. This ensures the guidelines work as intended and keep all children safe. 

Reverberation#

Reverberation can be measured as reverberation time (RT) at different sound frequencies (Hz). 

For unoccupied learning spaces in primary schools, the RT (500Hz/1000Hz average) is typically between 0.4 and 0.5 seconds. For smaller spaces, RTs should be at the lower end of the range. 

If you commission a specialist acoustic assessment and it certifies that the RTs in all indoor spaces do not exceed 0.5 seconds, it shows noise levels do not unduly interfere with normal speech and communication or cause distress or harm to any child attending.