It’s been a busy week for those involved in the fight against nuisance behaviour. Tony Blair and David Blunkett marked the first anniversary of the Antisocial Behaviour Act yesterday, Lord Falconer introduced a new witness protection scheme over the weekend and the Metropolitan police are streamlining their approach to securing antisocial behaviour orders.

Nobody doubts the huge social costs of nuisance behaviour and, since 1999, there has been a deluge of government initiatives to combat the problem. The introduction of ASBOs has been the most prominent move and, particularly in the past year, the most readily applied.

The government has encouraged their increased use, and councils or registered social landlords securing a new batch have often announced the news with a fanfare.

While social landlords and their tenants may view securing the orders as a tangible success in the struggle to combat nuisance and the fear of nuisance, an annual increase in ASBOs actually represents a failure: failure to create environments that prevent antisocial behaviour. Perhaps if the government encouraged the reduction of antisocial behaviour rather than the use of ASBOs, greater ingenuity would be employed in attacking the causes of this type of behaviour.

This week sees another raft of ideas to address the problem, including the establishment of 50 antisocial behaviour action areas (page 7). This seems to be a good idea, focusing energy and resources on the neighbourhoods in greatest need. However, let’s hope that the 50 do not end up in some kind of league table, vying for the honour of issuing the highest number of ASBOs.

Indeed, maybe these areas will bring about more co-ordination in the prevention of antisocial behaviour, linking the efforts of social services, education and housing to halt the problem before ASBOs – or any of the other powers available to RSLs – need to be used.

Let’s hope the antisocial behaviour action areas don’t end up in some kind of league table, vying to issue the most ASBOs

Also announced this week was a plan to standardise ASBO applications across London.

As many RSLs operate across several boroughs, this can only be a good thing: a streamlined process will reduce the costs and the time needed to secure an order.

Lord Falconer’s announcement that witnesses in antisocial behaviour cases would get protection is also very welcome. Although the option to give evidence by video link or even in total anonymity may not increase the number of people volunteering to witness, it will provide greater reassurance to those who do.

Source

Housing Today