A periodic boundary element technique is implemented to study the noise reduction capability of a plate with a serrated trailing edge under quadrupole excitation. It is assumed for this purpose that the quadrupole source tensor is independent of the trailing edge configuration and that the effect of the trailing edge shape is to modify sound radiation from prescribed boundary layer sources. The flat plate is modelled as a continuous structure with a finite repetition of small spanwise segments. The matrix equation formulated by the periodic boundary element method for this 3D acoustic scattering problem is represented as a block Toeplitz matrix. The discrete Fourier transform is employed in an iterative algorithm to solve the block Toeplitz system. The noise reduction mechanism for a serrated trailing edge in the near field is investigated by comparing contour plots obtained from each component of the quadrupole for unserrated and serrated trailing edge plate models. The noise reduction due to the serrated trailing edge is also examined as a function of the source location.