Help and advice Antisocial behaviour

We want your neighbourhood to be a great place to live. Antisocial behaviour can make you, your family and your community feel unsafe, distressed or annoyed. That’s why tackling antisocial behaviour is a priority for us.

What is antisocial behaviour?

Antisocial behaviour (ASB) includes:

• excessive noise
• verbal abuse
• physical violence
• intimidation or harassment based on age, gender, disability, race, religion or belief, sexuality or any other reason
• damage to property or possessions
• drug and alcohol-related antisocial behaviour
• using our property for illegal purposes such as drug dealing and prostitution

It can also include domestic violence and abuse. If your partner, relative or another person you live with is being violent towards you, we can help.

What isn’t antisocial behaviour?

Not everything reported to us is considered antisocial behaviour. Examples of things we don’t class as antisocial behaviour are:

• babies crying or children playing
• loud talking or laughing
• using a washing machine, tumble dryer or vacuum cleaner during the day
• noise from people moving around in their home
• cooking smells
• cultural differences
• nuisance from pets and animals
• fly-tipping
• untidy and/or overgrown gardens
• vehicle-related nuisance, such as inconsiderate parking
• one-off events, such as a birthday party

We consider these to be everyday living noises, lifestyle differences or nuisance, not antisocial behaviour.

In these circumstances, we may give advice so you and your neighbours can resolve the situation yourselves or work with your neighbour to resolve the issue.

What should you do if you experience antisocial behaviour?

Before reporting antisocial behaviour – and only if you feel it is safe to do so – you should try talking to the person causing the problem. They may not realise they’re causing a nuisance and it can often stop the problem straight away. You can find helpful advice about resolving disputes with neighbours on the UK Government website.

How do you report antisocial behaviour?

If you’re not able to resolve the problem yourself, or don’t want to approach your neighbour, you can contact us for help or report it to us using our online form.

If the problem affects other neighbours, ask them if they would like to report it to us as well. It may be easier to settle a dispute if we receive reports from everyone experiencing the same problem.

If the problem is to do with crime or violence, we’ll advise you to contact the police on 101 or, in an emergency, on 999. If it’s noise nuisance from loud music, animals or machinery, you’ll need to speak to your local council’s Environmental Health team. We’ll work with those organisations to stop the antisocial behaviour as soon as possible.

If the person causing the problem is not one of our customers, we have fewer powers to deal with them. We may direct you to the agency that can help if that’s the case, such as your local council, and we may work together with them to stop the nuisance.

What will we do?

When we receive an antisocial behaviour report, we will listen to you and make an initial risk assessment – called a Harm Assessment – based on what you tell us and how it affects you. We will take your report seriously and deal with it in confidence. We’ll be clear about what we can do to help and what steps we’ll be taking to resolve the issue.

While we’re investigating the report, we’ll agree an Action Plan with you. This plan will set out what we can do together to help the situation.

We’ll contact the person causing the antisocial behaviour to explain what they’re doing is wrong and work with them to make them stop. We use tools such as mediation and acceptable behaviour agreements (ABAs) to help stop the issue. If the antisocial behaviour doesn’t stop, we may need to take formal action through the courts.

We can give you extra help while we’re investigating, such as extra security, and will tailor any additional support to your needs. This will be part of your Action Plan.

How can you help with our investigation?

We’ll ask you to monitor the antisocial behaviour and provide us with details such as dates and times.

If your issue is with noise, you can use a free smartphone app called The Noise App to record the noise and send it directly to us. Recordings are useful for us when we’re investigating noise complaints, as we can better appreciate the issue if we’re able to hear it for ourselves.

How quickly will we deal with the problem?

How quickly we deal with antisocial behaviour depends on how serious it is. When you report the problem to us, we’ll carry out a Harm Assessment and will respond according to the harm it is causing you, your family and your community.

• Where there’s been violence or a threat of violence, we’ll respond within 24 hours
• We’ll respond to issues such as fly-tipping, noise nuisance or unreasonable behaviour within five working days

Keeping you informed

We will tell you and your neighbour what is happening with your case at each step of the complaint.

If you’re not happy with the action we are taking, please get in touch with your locality manager who will review your case and may refer the case to our Tenancy Enforcement team. If you are still not happy, you can ask to use our complaints procedure. You can also contact your local authority to ask them to review your complaint under the Community Trigger.