Families who had to put up with blaring music from a marathon 26-hour party have called for out-of-hours noise patrols on Canvey.

People living in the normally quiet Little Gypps Road on the island had their weekend ruined when a neighbour's 21st birthday party raged from 5.30pm on Saturday to 7.30pm the following evening.

Police asked the revellers to turn the music down at 12.36am on Sunday and again at 1.30am, after a complaint from a nearby nursing home. Canvey officers also went to the old people's home to assure them the noisy residents had been visited and ordered to turn down the blaring music.

One angry resident, Steve Underwood, said a neighbour contacted environmental health and when he dialled the out of hours number he was put through to someone in Oxford.

Mr Underwood, who has only lived on Canvey for five weeks, said: "My neighbour was eventually put through to someone local who was just not interested.

"It was a case of "so it's a party - tough!".

"I was not being a party pooper but they had a marquee in the garden and the noise was pounding out from 5.30pm on Saturday to 7.30pm on Sunday. The whole street could hear it and a couple of people asked them to turn it down but they were ignored."

Mr Underwood has now called for Castle Point to have emergency noise patrols - similar to the system in Southend.

He said: "To have nobody with the ability to stop noisy all-night parties on Canvey is just not good enough. Parties do not take place between 9am and 5pm, so what good is someone during those hours?"

Housing director Alan Longford said the number of noise complaints did not justify the expense of an out-of-hours call-out system.

He said: "We have a small team of environmental health officers which does not allow for a 24-hour call-out system.

"We receive an average of four calls a year, which does not financially justify setting up such a system.

"If we know a party is going on beforehand then we can serve appropriate warning notices but even then, the party organisers can only be prosecuted after the event. The council's health committee decided some years ago not to operate an emergency response team."

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