Our new approach to anti-social behaviour and Good Neighbourhood Management

In January, we launched our new approach to tackling anti-social behaviour (ASB). As it’s ASB Awareness Week, this gives us the perfect opportunity to reflect back on why the approach was reviewed and take a look at the outcomes we've seen so far. 

The reasons behind the review of the approach were to: 

• Meet the Regulator of Social Housing’s Neighbourhood and Community Standard 

• Capture the changes to the anti-social behaviour case review (formerly known as Community Trigger) 

• Learn from spotlight reports into ASB and noise complaints from the Housing Ombudsman 

• Improve customer feedback through the Tenant Satisfaction Measures around our approach to handling ASB 

We created the ASB Directory on our website to show customers how we deal with ASB. The directory also helps customers know how to report neighbour nuisance in the right way and offers guidance for issues that aren’t classed as antisocial behaviour. 

We’re still in the early stages of this new approach, and we’ll only be able to fully measure its impact once some of the longer-running legal cases are resolved. 

However, we’re already starting to see some positive signs!  

The number of cases being opened, the duration of cases, and the number of ongoing cases have all halved. This shows that reports of ASB are dealt with quickly when we can take enforcement action.  

Ongoing cases are open for much longer due to the waiting time for court hearings where legal action is needed.  

We also committed to working with customers to support them in resolving issues that did not meet the threshold for ASB.  

We work with customers on Good Neighbourhood Management Cases and the graph below shows that we've been proactively working through these cases too. 

As part of the review, we asked customers who had experienced ASB to identify what they wanted the new approach to deliver.  

The following table shows what we’ve been able to demonstrate so far in response to their feedback.  

Customer themes	Our responses (since the launch of the new approach)
Dealing with people fairly	ASB cases are only opened for issues that meet the threshold. Where legal action is considered, a justification exercise and Equality Impact Assessment are carried out.
Written confirmation of the   investigation and next steps	This remains an area for improvement and our efforts will be focused on ensuring that this happens moving forwards.
Dealing with the issues   reported	A review of all ongoing cases shows that appropriate action is being carried out. Monthly case reviews are conducted to ensure this is done in a timely manner.
Improved security measures	We have used our new CCTV equipment to investigate 9 cases. 31 items have been requested from our community safety stock to help customers in their homes.