Anti-social behaviour
We know that instances of anti-social behaviour can sometimes make life difficult for you and your neighbours, and we want to help stop it whenever we can.
What is anti-social behaviour?
Anti-social behaviour can include issues such as loud music, dumping rubbish, vandalism or dog fouling. It can also include more serious, criminal issues such as drug dealing, harassment, racial abuse and damage to property.
We will not investigate as anti-social behaviour things which are considered the result of normal day-to-day living – such as the sound of upstairs neighbours walking about, cooking smells or neighbour differences / differences of opinion.
If you report someone, you need to be sure about why you are making a report. Most of our properties are flats, many of which are in older period conversions where sound insulation can be poor, and it is important to be reasonably tolerant. Sometimes your neighbours may be unaware that their actions are causing you annoyance or distress: you may be able to resolve the situation yourself by having a friendly conversation with them.
How to report anti-social behaviour
You can report anti-social behaviour either by contacting us at the office or by reporting anti-social behaviour online using the web form.
If you live in one of our sheltered schemes you can also tell your Support Services Officer
When we receive your report, we will make contact with you to find out more information and agree the next steps. We will try to do this as quickly as possible, but as a minimum this will be as follows:
- Within one working day for high-risk incidents
- With five working days for medium or low risk incidents
Please always phone the police on 999 for emergencies that require immediate attention – including any incident where you feel physically threatened or at risk.
What we will do when you report anti-social behaviour
We will contact you by telephone to confirm the details of your report and get any additional information from you. We will let you know at this time what we will do next. We will also agree a timescale with you for keeping you informed of progress.
We may ask you to attend the office or arrange to visit you at your home to discuss the incident/s in greater detail.
We will investigate your report in confidence and won’t reveal your identify to your neighbour or anybody else unless you agree to this being done. However, in most cases, the first step to take would be for us to contact the person causing you a problem, so that they are made aware of their behaviour and the problems that it’s causing so that they have an opportunity to change their behaviour. We will ask you to agree to let us do this.
After we have spoken or written to the person causing you problems, we will then monitor the situation to see whether their behaviour improves.
To help us with our monitoring, we will ask you to help us by:
- Writing down the dates and times of any further incidents
- Telling us how it has affected you and made you feel
- Letting us know if anyone else has witnessed the problem as well
We will provide you with a copy of our anti-social behaviour incident diary to help you do this or you can download it below:
If the anti-social behaviour continues, we will ask the person behaving badly to attend our offices to discuss the situation. We may also involve other agencies such as Haringey Council and the Police to investigate any incidents and take appropriate action.
We will warn the perpetrator of the anti-social behaviour that their tenancy may be at risk if they continue with their behaviour or actions. We may ask them to sign documents such as a Good Neighbour Agreement or Anti-social Behaviour Contract, promising to behave in a certain way in order to maintain their tenancy.
How does the Trust decide which action to take?
We take the following factors into account when considering what our next steps will be:
- The type of behaviour
- The severity and frequency of incidents
- The evidence that is available
- The impact that the behaviour is having
- Who else is being affected?
- Whether the person/people whose behaviour is causing problems are vulnerable
- Whether the person/people whose behaviour is causing problems has been given an opportunity to change it (depending on the severity of it) and whether there has been an improvement
- What other intervention(s) has/ have been considered or tried so far
We will take legal action, such as applying for an injunction or taking possession action, only where it is reasonable, and will evict people from our properties only as a last resort. Eviction is only used where the case is so serious that a court judge will order it. For this to happen we need strong evidence and the support of witnesses to demonstrate this. It is for this reason that we ask tenants experiencing anti-social behaviour to keep incident diaries.