Anti-social behaviour

How we can help

Often there are steps that you can take to try and resolve the issues before they escalate. It’s important that you don’t put yourself or others in harm’s way, however, where it is appropriate, we encourage customers to work with their neighbours to find a solution. We can help in the early stages by offering advice and support on how to approach the issue.

Where we need to get involved, our approach will include using a range of preventative actions early on, in order to avoid the issue escalating. In suitable cases this will include the use of independent mediators.

In some cases, we may consider that one of our partner agencies is better placed to take the lead on issues our customers report to us. When this happens, we will work with our customers and our partners to support, advise and keep track of progression.

An example of this is noise nuisance, where your Local Authority’s (Environmental Health) Team can assist with noise monitoring equipment, which can help lead to a successful prosecution of those causing excessive noise disruption.

What else can Great Places do?

We have a range of legal tools available to us, which we will use to tackle anti-social behaviour where we can. However, it is important to note that we will need to work with customers directly to gain good-quality evidence before we are able to proceed to court.

This doesn’t always mean the person causing the problems will be evicted – sometimes this is out of our control, which is why it is important that we work together with customers to find a way of preventing issues escalating at the earliest opportunity.

What is not considered anti-social behaviour?

• General disagreements for example staring or looking at someone, or life style clashes;
• Children playing or youths innocently congregating;
• Ball games;
• Parking disputes;
• Children falling out or arguing;
• One-off parties or BBQs;
• Household noise such as toilets flushing, washing machines, babies crying, smoking in own property or doors closing.

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