Anti social Behaviour - Our Service Standards
Our 'Anti social Behaviour - Our Service Standards' leaflet sets out what you can expect from us if you have problems with anti social behaviour. It tells you about our service standards and how you can help us to deliver the service promised.
You can download the leaflet (pdf file 115kb) or view the text from the leaflet below.
Introduction
What is anti social behaviour
Our promise to you
Your responsibilities
Useful contacts
Are we meeting our service standards?
Introduction
All tenants have the right to the peaceful enjoyment of their home. Equally, every tenant has a responsibility not to interfere with their neighbour’s right to the peaceful enjoyment of their home.
Rochdale Boroughwide Houisng (RBH) is a member of the Rochdale Safer Communities Partnership and is committed to taking positive action in conjunction with our partners to deal with all forms of anti social behaviour. We will not tolerate anti social behaviour by any person on our estates and we will take action where appropriate.
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What is anti social behaviour?
Behaviour that causes or is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress. Examples include, but are not limited to:
- many kinds of criminal behaviour such as dealing or misuse of drugs or handling stolen goods
- harassment, including intimidation and abusive or insulting words or behaviour
- racial harassment and/or other hate related behaviour
- violence or threats of violence
- graffiti and vandalism
- damaging or threatening to damage another persons possessions or property
- youth nuisance
- nuisance from pets and animals
- noise nuisance
- disputes between neighbour
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Our promise to you
- We will provide information and advice on anti social behaviour:
- in your tenants handbook
- in your tenancy agreement
- in our anti social behaviour policy
- During the sign-up interview we will explain the rights and obligations contained within the tenancy agreement, our policy on anti social behaviour and the standards of behaviour expected from tenants
- in our leaflet ‘neighbour nuisance problems – useful advice for council tenants’
- on our website at www.rbhousing.org.uk
- from your housing officer or local housing office
- from our emergency out of hours tenancy support service that operates between 5pm and 10pm seven days a week. The service is primarily for council tenants of black and minority ethnic origin who experience racial or other harassment on the estate and provides immediate support and advice in a range of languages. Telephone 07071 225 445.
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Reporting anti social behaviour
- We will offer a range of ways to report anti social behaviour to your local housing office:
- in person, in writing, by telephone or e-mail.
- through a third party such as a Councillor, your tenants and residents association, a friend or relative.
- anonymously. However, this may restrict the amount of investigation and action we can undertake and will not allow us to provide you with information and support.
- We will record your complaint and allocate it to a named officer (This will usually be your housing officer, but if the problem is serious and/or continues after initial action has been taken, the case will be allocated to a named Tenancy Enforcement Officer from our Legal Services and Enforcement Team)
- We will acknowledge your complaint within 48 hours
- We will interview you at a venue where you feel comfortable. If this cannot take place when you report the complaint, we will interview you within 24 hours for serious cases or within 5 working days for all other cases. During the interview we will:
- discuss the situation
- tell you about the procedure
- discuss what action we can take
- develop an action plan with you to investigate the complaint. All actions will be fully discussed and agreed with you before we proceed
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Investigating your report and taking action
- We will investigate every reasonable complaint to establish the full facts surrounding the case, even when reported anonymously. The investigation and any associated interviews with other potential witnesses or other tenants, residents or victims will take place within 24 hours for urgent/serious cases and within 10 working days in all other cases.
- Where complaints are received about regular/ongoing problems we will issue you with incident diary sheets to record any future incidents. If you cannot complete the diary sheets we will loan you dictation equipment.
- We will usually interview the alleged perpetrator and take appropriate action such as issuing a warning or getting an undertaking/promise from the perpetrator not to continue with the behaviour.
- After this initial action we will assess the case so far and send you a letter to let you know the outcome of the assessment.
- If the case is serious and/or it has not been resolved by the initial action we will refer the case to our Legal Services and Enforcement Team to consider further action, including:
- legal action such as anti social behaviour orders or possession proceedings. Where possible we will try to resolve problems without resorting to legal action but we will consider legal action against any person who continues to behave in an anti social manner
- Referral to other agencies such as the Police, Youth Offending Team, Education Welfare, Probation, Social Services or Community Safety
- Urgent rehousing – in exceptional circumstances temporary accommodation may be provided
- If necessary we will take action against someone who is not a Council tenant and/or any organisation who interferes with your right to the peaceful enjoyment of your home.
- During all stages of your complaint we will:
- take your complaint seriously
- make every reasonable attempt to resolve the problem in a firm but sympathetic manner
- remain impartial and objective in any action taken. All parties have a right to a fair hearing and we will presume all parties are innocent until the facts about any complaint have been established.
- deal with all complaints sensitively and in the strictest confidence. We will not disclose any information to any other party or agency without consent.
- consider and address issues of vulnerability of witnesses and perpetrators
- provide support to all our witnesses during the complaint process and afterwards by maintaining regular contact and keeping them as fully informed as possible throughout the process. Support may also include but is not limited to, liaising with Victim Support and other relevant agencies to provide additional support and/or counselling and the provision of practical safety and security measures such as fitting safety glass or fitting alarms or panic buttons with a direct link to the Police.
- work with you to try to resolve your problem, and explain clearly what is happening at each stage.
- Take action that seeks to challenge anti social behaviour and bring about real changes by using a variety of intervention, prevention and rehabilitation in conjunction with our partner agencies.
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Your responsibilities:
- If you are experiencing problems with your neighbours you should try to resolve them yourself. Our leaflet ‘neighbour nuisance problems – useful advice for council tenants’ offers practical advice. If you are unable to sort it out yourself, the anti social behaviour continues or is serious, you should report the problem as soon as possible to your local housing office. Reporting problems promptly will help us to:
- give you advice and support.
- take prompt action to deal with the problem.
- ‘nip the problem in the bud’.
- protect you by dealing with very serious incidents swiftly.
- Any criminal behaviour, including violence or threats of violence should be reported to the Policy immediately. You should also report any such incidents to your local housing office as we may be able to work with the Police in dealing with the problem.
- RBH expects all tenants to display acceptable standards of behaviour at all times. This obligation extends to anyone living with you and your visitors. Your tenancy agreement sets out the expected standards of behaviour
- You should be a good neighbour who understands and tolerates different lifestyles of others.
- You should always consider whether your own actions have caused or aggravated the problem.
- To enable us to fully investigate any incidents you must provide us with full and accurate details.
- It is important that you carry out any actions you have agreed to in the action plan such as helping us to gather evidence of any further incidents or ongoing problems by completing diary sheets. We will not ask you to help us in any way that exceeds your capacity or willingness to act or which places you at further risk.
- You must not make false or malicious complaints about another person. If a complaint is found to be false or malicious it will be treated as an act of harassment.
- It is important that you do not try to retaliate against the perpetrator in any way. This could jeopardise a case and may even result in us taking action against you.
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Useful contacts:
RBH's Emergency out of hours Tenancy Support Service: 07071 225 445
Police: 0161 872 5050 (in an emergency call 999)
Social Services:
- If you are concerned about the wellbeing of any child contact Child Care SErvices:
- Rochdale and Pennines (01706) 865286
- Heywood and Middleton (0161 643 1525
- If you are concerned about the wellbeing of any adult contact Adult Care SErvices:
- Rochdale and Pennines (01706) 644106
- Heywood and Middleeton 0161 643 1525
Environmental Services: Offer a range of services including pest control, noise nuisance, animal welfare and air pollution (01706) 864255
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Are we meeting the service standards set out above?
If you think we haven't dealt with your report of anti social behaviour in accordance with the service standards set out above please e-mail us to let us know where we are going wrong and how you think we can improve our service.
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