BE it noisy televisions, roadworks or the incessant barking of your next door neighbour's Jack Russell, the one thing guaranteed to rub people up the wrong way is noise.

You can almost guarantee it. It's a Saturday morning and you're preparing for a lie in after a hard week at work when next door feel it's about time they cracked on with redecorating the spare room.

Those one-off occasions are the type we tend to grin and bear but, increasingly, people are taking a stand over being disturbed in one way or another by noise.

It seems no one is immune.

More and more people are taking noisy neighbours, workmen, pubs and clubs to task over excessive noise - even a school in Fareham was handed a council order to tone down music classes because it was disturbing locals.

Budding salsa and rock musicians at Brookfield School were told to pipe down or risk a court case after being inundated with complaints by people living nearby.

So, in response to the growing problem, a day dedicated to noise awareness is being staged.

To date more than 500 organisations, including councils, housing associations, schools and Citizens Advice Bureaux across the UK have signed up to Noise Action Day 2003, which takes place today.

Mary Stevens from NASC, the charity that promotes environmental protection and organises the annual action day, said the day was about raising awareness.

"Noise management officers believe that better public education on noise expectation is the best way to address a problem that can impact on quality of life for most of us. Noise Action Day is proving more and more successful as we try and promote practical solutions to every day neighbour noise problems and a bit more consideration.

"We encourage everyone to take a quiet moment to consider the noise they make, and when they make them, and what can be done to reduce the impact."

So what is it about noise that gets us so worked up?

Dr Mark Van Vugt, a social psychologist at Southampton University, said: "Studies to date suggest that noise is certainly a stresser. People react to it emotionally and in some cases even physically. But the effect of noise diminishes the moment people have, or think they have control over it.

"If people believe they can turn the noise on and off then the noise itself is not so stressful. For example, if people are on good terms with their neighbours and feel able to ask them to turn down loud music then the music itself will not be so annoying. That is compared with people who don't get on with their neighbours and don't feel able to approach them - they become a lot more agitated by the sound.

"This was proved in a study where people were given anagrams of words to solve. Their performance was a lot poorer when they were put in a room with constant noise, as you would expect. But the second part of the study gave them a switch on their desks that enabled them to turn the music off whenever they wanted. Although none of them actually used it the performance levels improved because they had a perceived control over the noise source."

So what do you do if communication breaks down? The people at the front line of any noise complaint are usually the environmental health officers of your local authority. Every year they brave irate residents, pub managers and event organisers, when a noise problem has gone beyond the "asking them nicely" stage.

More and more often they are forced to serve an abatement notice which if flouted could land the offender in court facing thousands of pounds in fines.

Southampton Cabinet member for environment and transport Jill Baston said: "It is not always easy to complain if you have a noisy neighbour and a noise nuisance can be very difficult to live with.

"The highly valued extended 'out of hours' service can step in as a third party if noise levels are unacceptable and residents find it awkward to deal with noise problems."

In the past year Southampton's environmental health service received 4,650 calls to their department, leading to 224 noise abatement orders being issued, nine seizures of hi-fi equipment, 23 successful prosecutions with eight more currently going through the court system.

It's not just loud music that prompts a call-out. Officers have also been called to deal with a variety of noisy pets including parrots and geese and on one occasion had to deal with a call-out where neighbours took offence to the constant banging of the headboard from next door.

The message is a clear one: tone it down or else.

However, not all the work of an environmental health officer is about prosecution - much of it is education.

As one example, officers in Gosport are running a series of workshops aimed at children as young as five in an effort to encourage them and their parents to be more considerate when making noise around others.

Technical officer Claire Terry said: "The response we had last year was really good so we are running the workshops again this year.

"There is no doubt that more and more people are complaining to the council about noise. That could genuinely be because there are more cases but it could also be because people are not prepared to tolerate noise as much and they know of the service councils offer to deal with it. Either way we are being proactive about the problem and running the workshops in several schools across Gosport in the hope of educating them, and through them their parents as well."

The noise workshops invite youngsters to shout into decibel meters to show them how noisy they can be while also stressing the importance of reducing noise to protect hearing. Claire added: "What we try and do is just demonstrate that just a bit more thought and consideration for others can really make a difference on the quality of life for people around you."