Anti-social behaviour

Anti-social behaviour (ASB), including hate crime, can have a significant and disruptive impact on our tenants, families and communities. It’s a priority for us that our tenants feel safe and secure in their homes.

We work with team members, tenants, neighbourhoods and partner agencies to prevent and tackle anti-social behaviour by taking a preventative, proactive and person-centred approach.

Our Safer Neighbourhoods Team are responsible for dealing with complex or high level neighbourhood safety issues and ASB.

Our Neighbourhood Managers are responsible for dealing with more straightforward ASB and tenancy breaches.

What is anti-social behaviour?

Anti-social behaviour is defined by the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 as:

a) conduct that has caused, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress to any person,

b) conduct capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to a person in relation to that person’s occupation of residential premises, or

c) conduct capable of causing housing-related nuisance or annoyance to any person

“housing-related” means directly or indirectly relating to the housing management functions of a housing provider or local authority. As part of our policy, this means the delivery of housing related services by Two Rivers Housing.

Examples of anti-social behaviour include, but are not limited to:

• Criminal offences and criminal behaviour, whether convicted or not
• Drug use or possession, including use or possession of cannabis
• Violence and threats of violence
• Hate crimes and incidents
• Threatening or intimidating behaviour
• Harassment
• Ongoing verbal abuse
• Persistent loud music or noise nuisance
• Vandalism and criminal damage
• Dangerous or potentially dangerous dogs
• Domestic abuse and violence – we have a separate, specific policy for dealing with this.

This is not a definitive list, and reports will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

What we ask from our tenants

Please be respectful of your neighbours and their lifestyles. Think about how what you do can affect the other people in your neighbourhood. Our tenancy agreements lay out our each tenants’ responsibilities around anti-social behaviour. You can also find information about this in our ASB Policy. This includes:

• Nuisance and anti-social behaviour
• Drugs
• Noise
• Harassment
• Pets

What our tenants can expect from us

We take a harm-based approach to dealing with anti-social behaviour and focus on the impact that reported ASB is having on victims and complainants.

Our teams use their own professional judgement as well our ASB risk assessment framework to assess the impact of the ASB occurring. Our ASB risk assessment framework helps make sure our teams take into account tenants’ and their families circumstances.

We recently changed our approach in response to tenant feedback and no longer categorise ASB response times based simply on the type of behaviour reported.

We won’t always become involved in disputes that are reported between neighbours. We recognise that sometimes lifestyles clash but this may not be considered a breach of tenancy or lease. If we assess the situation and decide that we won’t take action, we’ll explain the reasons for this. We’ll always consider the individual circumstances and impact as part of this.

How to Report ASB

We want our services to be as accessible as possible for all tenants. Tenants affected by anti-social behaviour and hate incidents or crime, or anyone affected by ASB or hate incidents or crime from one of our tenants, can report it to us in the following ways:

• In person at our office – our address is Rivers Meet, Cleeve Mill Lane, Newent, Gloucestershire, GL18 1DS. See How to find us.
  • Our opening hours are 8.30am – 5.00pm Monday – Friday, but on a Thursday, we open later at 10.30am. Our office is closed on public holidays.
• By post – at the address above
• By email – customerservices@2rh.org.uk
• By phone – 0800 316 0897
  • When the office is closed, calls will be transferred to our 24/7 out-of-hours service. Please note all calls may be recorded for training and/or monitoring purposes.

What happens when ASB is reported

When we receive a report of ASB we will contact the person who reported it no later than five working days from their initial report being received by us. We’ll usually try to arrange a visit so we can discuss concerns face to face.

We’ll gather more information on the ASB being reported and the impact it’s having on the victim or complainant. We’ll use the information to complete an ASB risk assessment to help us to assess appropriate action and support required for the tenant and their family.

We will agree an action plan with the complainant which will include:

• Frequency and preferred method of contact
• The method of reporting for complainants
• Action we will take
• Support required from our team or referrals to be made to other agencies
• Action plan review dates
• Frequency of case review and risk assessment

Our ASB and hate crime policy

Our Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) and Hate Crime Policy sets out how we will work with our tenants, communities and partner agencies to tackle and prevent ASB and in our neighbourhoods.

This policy applies to all Two Rivers Housing tenants, their household members and visitors.