Dealing with Reports of Anti-Social Behaviour

What can you expect from us?

This guide sets out the service you can expect to receive from us if you experience problems with anti-social behaviour (ASB). It describes what we do, the standards of service you can expect and how we will check we are meeting them.  It also sets out the things we expect you to do to help us deal with reports of unacceptable behaviour.

We know that ASB can mean different things to different people and can sometimes include criminal activity. For us, ASB includes incidents of excessive noise, repeated abusive language or behaviour, harassment, damage to property and threats of violence. It does not include:

• Normal day to day activities or household noise.
• Children playing ball games or other games.
• People being unpleasant towards one another, personal disputes, staring or other actions that we believe are not sufficiently serious enough to cause risk of harm.  
• Issues relating to parking.
• One off incidents that are minor in nature and unlikely to be repeated.
• Dogs barking for short periods of time.

Further details can be found in your tenancy agreement. Criminal activity such as the use, production or dealing of illegal drugs should be reported to the Police.

Our responsibilities

We will:

• Respond to reports of ASB and prioritise cases based on the information you provide. We will do this by asking you a series of short questions to establish what has happened, the frequency of the problem you are experiencing and by assessing the harm or potential risks of harm caused by the ASB.  We will also ask you to record any incidents that occur in a diary sheet.
• Tell you what action we can and cannot take. We will also advise you on what you can do. If we decide to take no further action, we will explain the reasons why and confirm this is writing. We will keep a log of the incident, in case this information is needed in the future.
• Contact you within our agreed response timescales to gather information, explain available options and agree an action plan for investigating and resolving the problems you are experiencing. In cases of serious ASB and Hate Crime, we will do this within 24 hours. In all other cases, we will aim to contact you within 5 working days.
• Contact other witnesses, make enquiries with other agencies and signpost you to other organisations such as the Police, where appropriate. We will need your consent to do this, unless there is an overriding safeguarding concern in relation to a vulnerable adult or child.
• Keep you informed of developments. Your case will be closed if no reports of ASB are received from you after 6 weeks, if the issue is resolved or when no further action can be taken by us. We will confirm our decision in writing, but will reopen the case should any further incidents of ASB be reported or if new evidence is provided.
• Contact the person alleged to have acted anti-socially to ensure we have all the facts and they are given a fair opportunity to respond to the allegations. Where appropriate, we will also explain the consequences and summarise the next steps of our investigations. We will not disclose your identity at this point, but where this is not possible because of the nature of the incident, we will advise you and discuss options with you.
• Try to use informal measures such as mediation to resolve your problems and consider taking enforcement action where required.  
• Provide you with access to a Noise App if you have problems with excessive noise and install noise monitoring equipment in certain circumstances.

• Where we need to take legal action, we will support you through this process and provide assistance and advice on gathering evidence.
• Keep your information confidential and not share it with other parties, unless we believe sharing it will help resolve criminal behaviour, we have safeguarding concerns, or you give your consent.
• Work with partners to identify the most appropriate ways of resolving the problems.
• Contact you when we close the case to seek your views on the service provided and identify any potential areas for improvement.

What we expect in return

Your responsibilities:

• Adhere to the conditions of your tenancy agreement, including looking after your home and being a good neighbour.
• Be tolerant and respectful towards your neighbours, visitors and other people living in the community.
• Try to resolve disputes with your neighbours yourself without the need for us to get involved. You should only do this if it is safe to do so.
• Work with us to gather evidence. This includes keeping an accurate record of incidents that occur and reporting these promptly to us or other agencies such as the Police. If you do not do this, we will not be able to challenge the unacceptable behaviour or build a case against the person causing it.

Measuring success

We will know if we are getting things right by:

• Monitoring and reporting our performance against our agreed performance measures.
• Asking you how happy you are with the service we have provided.

We will report our performance against these standards in our annual report to tenants. Regular updates will also be provided to our Customer Review Group, who are responsible for reviewing how well we are doing and offering constructive challenge.