ASB priority maintenance overview
Anti-social behaviour covers a whole range of thoughtless, inconsiderate or malicious activity which can negatively affect the quality of community life, and is capable of causing housing-related nuisance or annoyance to any person. Housing organisations take their responsibility towards residents and to the protection of their homes very seriously, and are empowered to take actions that are reasonable and proportionate to resolve the root causes of ASB. As well as working towards the prevention of ASB, they will seek to implement policies and procedures aimed at both intervention and diversion, underpinned by robust enforcement measures. Due to the complexity and nature of ASB incidents, it is crucially important that the correct priority weighting be assigned to each case, which is appropriate to the identified risk. The granularity of priority weightings can be defined across a broad spectrum, in line with the many different categorisations of ASB - violent criminal activity, drug dealing, assault, domestic violence, intimidation, vandalism, verbal abuse, etc. - and dovetailed with appropriate response mechanisms that will be triggered in each instance. For example, the highest priority weighting could be reserved for cases where there is evidence of danger to a victim or household, a risk of serious assault, or substantial harassment likely to cause severe mental or physical harm. Similarly, a lower priority weighting could be used in circumstances where a routine incident has been reported, with no serious or immediate impact on the victim, but which still requires thorough investigation and action. For each priority weighting in operation, a review target can be assigned to it, ensuring that open cases are scrutinised at a predetermined frequency, steered by an assigned service level agreement.
Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of ASB priority maintenance, including: