Well, maybe your council is not as alert, but I do detect that if the noise happens late at night at weekends it tends to get more instant action than at other times. Of course it also depends on where the noise is. You are not going to notice it so much if you live in an area with lots of heavy traffic for example or under the flightpath of a major airport, but one would hop that out in the country well away from other sources of noise it would be taken seriously. The annoyance factor of noise is also a personal thing. Some people are upset by strimmers others by the guy with his car repair shop at weekends trying to get the wheels of his posemobile with hammer tools.
There are of course things that can be done to reduce noise and I agree people really do need to try to be good neighbours, but a one off patio for a few days is not too bad, but aomeone who angle grinds everything is going a bit far. Dogs are another matter, Many do want their dogs to be audible as a deterent, but as you say you don'tneed yappy dogs all day. the deep bark is often not an issue. We have a dog round here which is so stupid it thinks its echo of its own bark is another dog and so has to be distracted or it will sit barking at its echo for hours!
Brian