The changing way we shop and the noise it creates was the subject of the keynote speech delivered by a noise campaigner at a pioneering global summit.

Gloria Elliot, chief executive of the Hove-based Noise Abatement Society (NAS), spoke at Quiet Cities, an international conference in London staged by organisations including Transport for London and delivery company DHL, and the world’s first global summit on re-timing freight deliveries.

She told the conference how changing shopping habits, with many people replacing big once-a-week supermarkets shops with more frequent smaller shopping trips, and the increase in home deliveries, have resulted in more noise nuisance for people living nearby.

This includes delivery noise, reversing alarms, metal roll cages, staff shouting and drivers leaving radios on while they unload.

Ms Elliot explained to Women Actually what she told the 200-strong audience: “There are big problems in urban city centres.

“If you think about the fact that you can order anything at any time, companies will deliver it to you. There are millions of transactions going on and each one generates movements.

“We need to think about our personal responsibility – I think the home delivery area is where people should think about the effect of their actions.”

The daughter of NAS founder John Connell, who described noise as the “forgotten pollutant”, Ms Elliot believes women can make a huge difference in curbing noise pollution.

“Women have a greater capacity than men to deal with it because they get it,” she said.

“Noise pollution is contextual: you should be able to make noise in the right place and at the right time, but in the wrong place at the wrong time, it can become stressful and detrimental to health.

“Even low noise, if it’s continuous, can be stressful. It’s because you can’t control it.”

The NAS has been involved in the freight deliveries debate since 2006, when the Government mooted that delivery times should be expanded to out-of-hours in order to ease congestion and improve safety in city centres.

But the NAS, the only registered UK charity to deal solely with noise issues, believed noise disturbance was not given enough consideration.

Since then, it has campaigned on the issue, launching a ‘Silent Approach’ scheme that laid out a de facto protocol of quiet delivery practices, which was the basis for the Government-backed Quiet Deliveries Demonstration Scheme, set up in 2010 by the Department of Transport, the Freight Transport Association and NAS to carry out quiet delivery trials across the UK.

The conference ended by emphasising the need for collaboration between councils, suppliers and freight transport companies to ensure quieter deliveries in response to changes in consumer habits.