The government has announced that landlords who provide social housing are to be given expert support to help them tackle anti-social behaviour, by way of a new panel that launched on Tuesday.
The advisory group will combine organisations across the public sector to help work out how landlords and support services can collaborate and help provide early intervention for potential vulnerable perpetrators, with the aim of reducing the 1.5 million incidents of anti-social behaviour recorded.
The Anti-Social Behaviour Panel will begin this summer and aims to produce good practice guidelines for social housing landlords, as well as the wider sector, to tackle anti-social behaviour. The plan is to publish these guidelines in Autumn 2022. The member organisations that will make up the Anti-Social Behaviour Panel are:
- Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities
- Home Officer
- Anti-Social Behaviour Help
- Aster Housing
- Gentoo Housing
- The Local Government Association
- National Federation of local authority-owned organisations (ALMOs)
- Network Homes
- Resolve
- SHAL
- Sovereign Housing
Speaking about this new announcement, Housing Minister Eddie Hughes MP said:
“No one should have to live in fear o anti-social behaviour and putting a stop to this is vital to our mission to level up the country.
We committed to protecting tenants from antisocial behaviour, as set out in the Charter for Social Housing Residents.
That’s why I’m pleased to welcome members of our new panel whose expertise will help inform landlords and other services how to deliver positive change for their tenants, alongside our new reforms to improve social housing standards.”
As one of the member organisations, Rebecca Bryant OBE, Chief Executive of Resolve, added:
“Anti-Social Behaviour Awareness Week gives us the opportunity to highlight the devastating impact of anti-social behaviour on victims and communities.
It is important that the challenge of anti-social behaviour continues to be given the priority it needs so that people everywhere feel safe in their homes and communities.
We are pleased to support the launch of the new Anti-Social Behaviour Panel and we look forward to working with partners to tackle the growing challenges around anti-social behaviour.”
There is already support available for social housing tenants who are experiencing anti-social behaviour, and this panel will build on that, including a ‘one stop shop’ where they can access information and report an incident to ensure that any perpetrators are dealt with quickly.
The launch of this panel marks Anti-Social Behaviour Awareness week, and it comes after the introduction of new measures that will regulate social housing in a much stricter way. The aim of this is to improve the standards of living for social housing tenants and have the capacity to further support vulnerable tenants, especially those with mental health difficulties.
