Landlords to take centre stage in nuisance crackdown

Housing providers will have to publish crime and disorder reduction strategies in the wake of the antisocial behaviour white paper published on Wednesday.

The white paper puts housing providers at the centre of the government's drive to clamp down on antisocial behaviour. It says local authorities have a vital role in partnership working between local agencies such as the police and community groups.

This joined-up working will mean the creation of wider crime and disorder reduction partnerships. They will have to produce strategies including details on how they plan to deal with antisocial behaviour and how they will integrate these into the delivery of local strategies.

The housing sector welcomed this focus on dealing with issues that occupy large amounts of housing providers' time – but questioned whether sufficient resources to exploit the new powers effectively.

Tom Manion, chief executive of Irwell Valley Housing Association, said: "I argue that it should have gone further and we should have the powers to issue on-the-spot antisocial behaviour orders and evictions. It's true that some registered social landlords are better at dealing with antisocial behaviour than others, so maybe it's an idea to have a resource paid for by the National Housing Federation through members contributing a small amount which would help train up officers who need more help in this field."

Bill Pitt, head of Manchester council's nuisance strategy team, was more upbeat.

He said: "This is a fantastic white paper. Councils and RSLs have to be accountable to their communities and those communities want to know what action is being taken on the issue. People should be ashamed of themselves if they complain."

Eamon Lynch, treasurer of the Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group, said: "There are a wide range of measures included in the paper but we're wary about how they could be delivered on the ground.

"I'm not sure that we need radical reforms given that it's taken three to four years for people to make ASBOs work.

"We support the greater use of injunctions but perhaps it would be better to issue more guidelines to help RSLs make better use of the powers they already have."

The white paper also promised consultation on the much-criticised proposals to withhold housing benefit from trouble tenants, an idea floated in the House of Commons last year by Frank Field MP.

The paper also contained a government promise to give all social landlords the power to obtain county court injunctions to exclude badly behaved tenants from a specified area and, if necessary, their own home.

Changes to court injunctions will make it easier to exclude troublemakers from areas where they have been known to be a nuisance – again including their own home.

Antisocial tenants will lose their secure and assured tenancies and lose their security of tenure through demoted tenancies until their behaviour is addressed.

If their behaviour does not improve, they will lose their right to buy and their eviction will be made easier.

Social landlords will be able to extend the initial 12-month probationary tenancy by a further six months if they have continuing concerns about a person's behaviour.

The paper also proposed a crackdown on begging. The country's three main homelessness charities – Crisis, Shelter and Centrepoint – are to write to home secretary David Blunkett demanding an urgent meeting at which they will urge him to reconsider this position.

Crisis chief executive Shaks Ghosh said: "The proposals are simply not going to work and are a waste of public resources."