Anti-social behaviour policy

If it is a crime, report it as a crime

The line matters because the two go to different places and the police can do things we cannot.

Call 999

If somebody is in danger, being threatened, being assaulted, or a crime is happening now.

Report it to the police, without calling 999

For a crime that is not an emergency — threats, harassment, criminal damage, drug dealing, theft, stalking, hate crime. Every police force takes these reports online, and each publishes its own non-emergency number. We do not print a number here that we have not verified against the force’s own published material.

Tell us as well

Always, and it makes a difference. We cannot act on what we do not know about, and a crime in one of our buildings is also a housing matter. Give us the crime reference number if you have one.

You do not need our permission to call the police, and calling them will never count against you here. If you are worried about reporting a crime because of something in your own history, tell us and we will help you do it anyway.

What counts as anti-social behaviour

Behaviour that causes, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress, or a nuisance or annoyance to somebody in their home. In practice:

• Noise that goes on, or happens at night, and does not stop when asked.
• Threats, intimidation, harassment or violence.
• Abuse aimed at somebody’s race, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or sexuality.
• Drug dealing, or drug use in shared parts of a building.
• Damage to the building, to shared areas, or to somebody’s belongings.
• Visitors who do any of the above — you are responsible for the people you let in.
• Rubbish dumped in shared areas, or anything that blocks a fire escape.
• Somebody taking over another resident’s home for drug dealing or exploitation. That is a crime and a safeguarding concern as well as anti-social behaviour, and it gets treated as all three.

What is not anti-social behaviour, and we will tell you so rather than open a case that goes nowhere:

• Ordinary household noise — footsteps, a washing machine, a baby crying, a door closing.
• Children playing.
• Cooking smells, or somebody living differently from you.
• A one-off disagreement between neighbours.
• Somebody behaving differently because they are unwell or disabled, where nobody is being harmed or threatened. That is a support matter and we will deal with it as one.

How to report it

Use the resident support route on our contact page, or tell any member of staff. Somebody can report on your behalf.

Tell us, as far as you can:

• What happened, in your own words.
• The date and roughly what time.
• Where — which flat, which shared area, outside.
• Who was involved, if you know, and who else saw it.
• How it has affected you.

Dates are what turn a report into a case. One report is an incident; a list of dates is evidence. If it is happening repeatedly, keep a note each time — the date, the time, what happened, how long it lasted. Ask us for a diary sheet and we will give you one. A court will ask for exactly this, and so will the council.

You can report anonymously and we would still rather know. But be clear about the cost: we cannot come back to you for more detail, we cannot tell you what happened, and we usually cannot use an anonymous report as evidence for anything formal.

TBD — how quickly we come back to you. The response times for an anti-social behaviour report at each risk level — the time to first contact with the person reporting, and the time to a first case review. Operations has to set these against a staffing rota that exists. They must be consistent with the repairs response times and the complaints time limits published elsewhere on this site. What we will do in the meantime is tell you who is dealing with it. TBD — The job title of the person who owns an anti-social behaviour case and the job title of the person a resident can escalate to within the service. Roles, not names, and operations has to confirm both.

What we will do

In roughly this order, and we will tell you at each point what has happened.

1. Listen and record it. What you told us, in your words, on the day, in a case record.
2. Work out the risk. To you, to the person reported, and to anybody else in the building. Threats, hate incidents, domestic abuse and anything involving a weapon go to the top and go to the police.
3. Agree with you what happens next, including what you want to happen. You will not be told to sort it out yourself.
4. Talk to the person reported. Most anti-social behaviour stops at this step, and a surprising amount of it is somebody who did not know.
5. Offer support to both of you. Ours, or a referral — mental health, drug and alcohol services, the council, the police.
6. Offer mediation where both people agree. Never where there has been violence, threats, abuse aimed at who somebody is, or domestic abuse.
7. Use a formal step if it continues — a written warning, a written agreement about behaviour, a referral to the council or the police, and only at the end of that an application to court.
8. Tell you the outcome, as far as we are allowed to. We cannot tell you what action we have taken against another person; we can tell you that the case is being dealt with and that it has been closed, and why.

Why support usually comes before enforcement

This is the clause that makes this policy different from the one you would get from a large landlord, and it is deliberate.

Most of the people we house have been homeless, have left prison, have left an abusive home, or live with a learning disability or a mental illness. Behaviour that looks anti-social from the flat below is often somebody in crisis, somebody being exploited by people who have moved into their home, somebody frightened, or somebody whose medication has changed. Evicting them does not fix any of that. It usually makes somebody homeless and moves the problem to a street or to another landlord.

That is not only our view, it is the law. The Equality Act makes it unlawful to treat somebody unfavourably because of something arising from their disability unless we can justify it. Where behaviour is a consequence of a disability — including a mental illness — we have to assess whether what we are proposing is proportionate before we do it, and record that assessment. We do that before any formal step, not as paperwork afterwards.

None of which means you have to put up with being harassed or frightened. Support first is not the same as doing nothing, and somebody being unwell is never a reason to leave somebody else unsafe. Where support is refused, or is not working, or where somebody is being threatened, we act — and the clause on the law sets out what acting actually means.

What we will not do

Said plainly, so that nobody is waiting for something that is not coming.

• We will not attend an incident as it happens. We are not an emergency service. That is 999.
• We will not act on a report we have no evidence for. One report of noise with no dates does not get somebody warned.
• We will not take a side. Both people get the same process, and both get told what is alleged.
• We will not evict somebody as a first step — and since 1 May 2026 no landlord can end a tenancy without a statutory ground and a court.
• We will not deal with something that is not anti-social behaviour as if it were. We will tell you what it is instead, and where it goes.
• We will not measure noise. Your council’s environmental health team has the legal powers for statutory noise nuisance and equipment we do not have. Ask them, and tell us you have.
• We will not promise you confidentiality we cannot deliver. See the clause below, which explains exactly where the limits are.

Domestic abuse is not anti-social behaviour

If somebody is being abused, controlled or frightened by a partner, an ex-partner or a family member, that is domestic abuse. It is dealt with separately, and never as a neighbour dispute.

• We will never mediate between somebody and the person abusing them.
• We will never tell the other person that you have spoken to us.
• We will act on the safety of the person being abused first — which may mean helping somebody move, and never means asking somebody to keep the peace.
• Abuse can also be a safeguarding concern, and our safeguarding policy sets out the route to the local authority.

Call 999 if you are in danger now. There are free national helplines for domestic abuse that run day and night and are independent of us. We are not printing a number here that we have not verified against the organisation’s own published material — ask us, or any member of staff, and we will find the current one with you.

What the law allows, and who holds which power

Most of the powers people expect a landlord to have belong to somebody else. Being clear about that saves you asking us for something we cannot do.

What we can do

Warn, agree written terms about behaviour, apply to a court for a civil injunction under the 2014 Act, and — as a last resort — apply to a court for possession on a statutory ground.

What the council and the police can do, and we cannot

Community protection notices, closure of a property, dispersal, criminal behaviour orders on conviction, and statutory noise nuisance action. We can report to them and give evidence, and we do.

The anti-social behaviour case review

If you have reported the same problem several times and nothing has happened, the 2014 Act gives you the right to ask your council for a review of the case, bringing the agencies together. The threshold is set locally. We will tell you how to ask, even when the review is about us.

On possession, plainly. Section 21 no-fault eviction was abolished on 1 May 2026. We can only ask a court for possession on a ground set out in statute, and we have to prove it. Where behaviour is the reason, that means a nuisance or annoyance ground, and the court decides. There are also grounds particular to supported accommodation — one where the support has ended or the accommodation has become unsuitable for somebody’s needs, and one where somebody has unreasonably refused to engage with the support. We will not use a support ground as a shortcut around the proportionality assessment described above, and we will say in any notice which ground we are relying on and why.

What we record, and who sees it

Everything you report is written down in a case record: what you said, when, and what we did. It is held under our privacy policy.

We will keep your name out of it as far as we can. Here is where we cannot:

• If it goes to court. Evidence has to come from somebody, and the person it is about is entitled to know the case against them. We will tell you before that point and you can decide what you want to do.
• If somebody is at risk of harm. A safeguarding concern goes to the local authority whether or not anybody consents, and our safeguarding policy explains why.
• If the police need it to prevent or investigate a crime.
• Where it is obvious anyway. In a house with three people in it, we cannot pretend a report came from nowhere, and we will not tell you we can.

We will not tell you what action we have taken against another resident. That is their personal information, not yours, and the same protection applies to you.

If somebody has reported you

You will be told what has been said, in enough detail to answer it, unless telling you would put somebody at risk. Nothing is decided before you have had the chance to give your side.

• You can have somebody with you — a friend, a relative, a support worker, an advocate.
• You can ask for an adjustment if a meeting or a letter is hard for you to deal with, and our equality and diversity policy sets out what you can ask for.
• Tell us if something is going on — your health, your medication, somebody who has moved into your home, money, drugs. It changes what we do, and it is not held against you.
• If you disagree with what we decide, complain. Our complaints policy applies to you exactly as it applies to the person who reported you.

Being reported is not the same as having done something. Cases are closed as unfounded and we will say so when they are.

If we do not deal with it properly

Complain. Not dealing with a report of anti-social behaviour is one of the most common things a landlord gets complained about, and it is exactly what our complaints policy is for — two stages, with time limits, and somebody uninvolved looking at it the second time.

You can also ask your council for an anti-social behaviour case review, whatever we say, and you can go to the police directly at any time. Complaining will never put your home at risk.

The residents page gathers the routes a resident needs in one place — this one, repairs, safety, support and complaints.

About this policy

TBD — the date this policy was adopted, who owns it, when it was last reviewed and when it is next due. It has to be reviewed when the response times above are confirmed, and whenever the possession grounds for supported accommodation change.