Year in review: tackling Anti Social Behaviour

Later this year we will be publishing our annual report for 2011/12. This is the seventh in a series of articles about the year just finished.  We would like your feedback to help shape our annual report.

Our Tenancy Enforcement Teams based in Manchester and Chorley had a busy year tackling Anti Social Behaviour and dealing with other tenancy matters.  The team has dealt with over 1,200 complaints in the last year.  These ranged from complaints about barking dogs and noise nuisance through to drugs warrants being executed in our properties.

Our focus this last year has been to improve our service to tenants by undertaking more work in-house, rather than relying on the use of external contractors.  We knew we had a great team of experienced people who had the skills, passion and commitment to do more of the legal work.  Something, we would usually send out to solicitors.

We often use injunctions when people repeatedly cause serious nuisance to others.  In the past we’ve sent these cases through to solicitors at an average cost of £1,500 per case.  We decided to trial dealing with these cases in-house and since June 2011, we have successfully obtained 21 injunctions without the use of solicitors.  This has meant that we have managed to deal with cases quicker while at the same time see savings of around £31,500 in legal fees.  This is a great result and we intend to reinvest this money back into improving services for our tenants and our annual Neighbourhood Fund.

In 2012/13 our priority will be to build on the experience we have gained over the last year and continue to deal successfully with ASB cases using our own resources, quickly and efficiently.  What would you think our Tenancy Enforcement Team should be focusing on and prioritising for improvement in tackling ASB in the year ahead?