Noise pollution may blight people’s lives, but it by no means always amounts to an unlawful nuisance for which compensation is payable. The High Court resoundingly made that point in a case concerning a holiday park frequently overflown by noisy RAF jets.

Every homeowner is entitled to a little peace and quiet and one High Court case has underlined that you don’t have to grin and bear noise nuisance. A judge issued an injunction against the operators of an aerodrome after a woman complained that the whirr of helicopter blades was making her life a misery.

The woman did not object to the low hum of aviation coming from the 100-year-old aerodrome. However, she did complain when part of the airfield, which was less than 60 metres from her boundary, began to be used regularly for training pilots in landing and taking off manoeuvres.

As a home owner, you enjoy a right to light and, if your neighbour interferes with it, a specialist lawyer can help you. In one striking case, a couple who objected to an extension which put part of their home in the shade won more than £30,000 in damages.

Couple A had planning consent to build an extension to the rear of their £1.65 million suburban home. Their neighbours, couple B, were on cordial terms with them and had not formally resisted the grant of that consent for fear of causing offence.

Homeowners have every right to take legal action if their lives are blighted by noise nuisance. However, one case has underlined that the modern world is not always as free from disturbance as one might wish and that the courts will only take action to prevent noises which are objectively unreasonable.

A couple claimed that their lives had been made a misery by noise emanating from a multi-use games facility which was about 50 metres from their garden.

The Court of Appeal has upheld the decision of the County Court to grant a mandatory injunction, instead of damages, where a property owner erected a staircase that caused a minor infringement of a neighbour's right to light.

The court took into account that the owner had been high-handed and constructed the staircase in breach of undertakings that it had given. The neighbour had accepted the undertakings, instead of seeking interim relief from the court, and should not be in a worse position.

Homeowners have a right to live in reasonable peace and the courts have all the powers required to ensure that their tranquillity is respected. In one case that proved the point, the High Court took urgent steps to end the nuisance of illegal high-performance vehicle racing close to a suburban housing estate.

Straight roads in the area had become a venue for so-called ‘cruisers' who met to perform stunts and high-speed drag races.

A couple who said that shattering helicopter noise from a nearby aerodrome made their lives a misery and stymied their hopes of selling their £4 million home will just have to live with the racket following a Court of Appeal ruling.

After the couple launched proceedings alleging noise nuisance, a judge described the sound of helicopters making training flights from sloping ground near their home as excruciating. The aerodrome’s operators were issued with an injunction that restricted training exercises on the slope to two 15-minute sessions per week.