An investigation was launched today into an open-air rock concert at York University that prompted angry complaints from across the city.

York police were inundated with calls about the noise from as far away as Stockton Lane and from the Tang Hall and Heworth areas on Saturday night and into the early hours of Sunday.

They also received numerous calls about other parties going on all over the city as students celebrated the end of term.

The open air university event took place at Vanbrugh College, as students celebrated their end of year exams.

Inspector Andy Bell, of York Police, who made a personal visit to the university after being flooded with complaints, said the organised event was monitored by security staff at the university.

"The noise was within what the security staff considered to be tolerable for the event," said Insp Bell. "I am aware that on one occasion they turned it down."

Paul Robinson, the City of York Council's environmental protection manager, said an investigation into the complaints had been started today.

"We have spoken to the university and will be meeting them later this week to assess what precautions were taken to make sure a nuisance wasn't caused," he said.

"They have a responsibility to the community that they don't create a nuisance and we take a dim view of it when they make this level of noise and this number of people are affected.

"If we feel that there is evidence that nuisance was created to a large number of people we will take steps to make sure it doesn't happen again."

A spokeswoman for the university said: "The University is very sorry that residents were disturbed and we will holding a full internal inquiry into the events of Saturday night."

She said the annual event, known as Woodstock, was organised by the Students' Union and the Rag Committee.

The organisers were not aware of the scale of complaints until the police arrived at 11.30pm, when the music was turned down.

"The university does have its own Environmental Health guidelines on noise and will now be looking at the monitoring equipment that was being used," she said.

Neil Fitch, Rag president, said: "We had no desire to offend local residents and turned the noise down as soon as we received complaints."

DCI John Lacy, of York Police, said today: "We received numerous calls about noisy parties and a lot of them were students celebrating the end of term.

"On most occasions advice was given and the music turned down."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.