The enforcers

Pitt, the head of Manchester's nuisance strategy team, had refused the man's application for council housing. "I talked about his previous behaviour and asked what he thought the impact of that would be on the community – he wasn't clear of his responsibilities, so I said we wouldn't be rehousing him. Then he burst into tears." Didn't he feel sorry for him? "Absolutely.

No one comes into housing to see people without accommodation. But our residents need to know we value our housing, we value them and we won't impose on them the possibility of having to live with an antisocial neighbour."

This willingness to face potentially dangerous situations head-on, combined with an approach that puts a community before an individual, means that Pitt's 19-strong team has come to be regarded as a leading exponent of the fight against antisocial behaviour since its launch in 1995.

Manchester, like most cities, has big problems with vandals, violence, teenage thugs and noisy neighbours. In the council's crime and disorder audit last year, residents said gangs of youths, damage to property, drug dealing and illegally dumped rubbish were among their biggest concerns. Crime, including nuisance, costs the city more than £900m a year.

Against this backdrop, Pitt and his team have earned a reputation for zero-tolerance, favouring enforcement over prevention and eviction over rehabilitation.

Pitt began at Manchester as a lettings clerk in 1974 and worked his way up through the housing advice service and estate management team. Since he launched the team eight years ago, Manchester has won almost 3000 legal actions including injunctions, evictions and antisocial behaviour orders – to put it in perspective, that's equal to the combined total of all the other councils across the country. In its first year Pitt's team won 53 legal cases against nuisance neighbours; last year, 559. The council and police-led drive in south Manchester to serve ASBOs on eight teenage troublemakers, for example, cut crime and nuisance by more than 80% last year.

But don't these figures merely indicate that Pitt is too heavy-handed in his treatment of complicated social issues? On the contrary, he says, he sees no reason to be "nervous of being proud of the volume of cases". More tenants come forward, he says, when they see results and several of his peers defend his tough approach: Angus Macdonald, head of housing at Isle of Wight-based Medina Housing Association, says Pitt is "determined, not aggressive".

Manchester's nuisance strategy group is a specialist team in the council's housing department, but works closely with the police, probation service and health authority. Specialist teams are still the exception; in a Local Government Association research paper last July, Tackling Antisocial Behaviour, just 81 of 312 English councils surveyed had a specialist unit.

Manchester's work has not gone unnoticed in Whitehall. Pitt was picked by ex-housing minister Lord Falconer to work on the antisocial behaviour consultation paper published by the government last April, and among the first things Louise Casey did in her new job as head of the Antisocial Behaviour Unit was to visit Pitt and his team. Casey is "well-versed to the fact that communities need to be protected", says Pitt, but he's not interested in joining her team.

The thinking tenant's tough guy
With his crew cut and crisp shirts, 56-year-old Pitt looks like a policeman. He also has the determined, no-nonsense manner of a law enforcer. But there is another, more subtle side to him: his thoughtful delivery; the sketches on the wall of his town hall office; his trench coat and trilby-style hat; the fact that he considered becoming a priest before deciding that housing would allow would be a better way for him to follow his drive to change the quality of people's lives for the better.

When he gets passionate about dealing with troublemaking tenants, it's not quite a sermon, but he is difficult to interrupt. One former Manchester council colleague, Irwell Valley chief executive Tom Manion, says he once imposed a "one hour rule" on the time Pitt was allowed to dominate a conversation – and Louise Casey was so astounded by his relentless delivery that she described meeting him as having been "Bill Pitted".

On the other hand, Eamon Lynch, treasurer at the Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group, says Pitt's "terrier-like qualities" work to his benefit and Tess Ash, a team leader in Pitt's strategy team (pictured right, in front of team deputy director Martin Lee), says: "Bill's passion and enthusiasm drive us all. He's a really supportive, accessible boss – we can call him late into the evening if we need to talk about any problems with cases, which is quite unusual in a manager."

We act as quickly as is appropriate: and if you’re talking about baseball bats at dawn, then appropriate is absolutely now

Growing up in the Cheshire town of Widnes, he was 15 when he decided to become a priest. After a degree in philosophy from the Gregorian university in Rome in 1968, he did a second degree in English at Oxford in 1973 – which is where he dropped the idea of the priesthood. It wasn't a crisis of faith, he says, but the difficulty of finding something that had vocational drive and would allow him to "make a difference". He moved to Manchester and took a job in a chemical factory while he decided what to do.

His "conversion to housing" came as he passed several huge housing estates while travelling to and from work. "I realised that this awful complex wasn't a factory but that people lived there. I thought knocking the lot down would be a major contribution."

Risky business
Pitt is driven by a zero-tolerance approach because he believes that dealing with problem neighbours is key to good housing management. Any housing manager worth their salt, he says, knows they must control their stock. "As people realise that you can act on antisocial behaviour, they begin to judge their landlords not just by bricks and mortar but by whether they are taking the quality of residents' lives seriously."

He concedes that his work can be risky, but says he finds that people still have respect for those in authority, particularly if that authority is used.

Cracking nuisance the Manchester way – evictions, injunctions and ASBOs – means building trust with tenants so they will agree to give evidence in court. Medina's Angus Macdonald recalls a training session for anti-nuisance officers where Pitt explained an obvious but golden rule of building trust – never open a conversation with a potential witness by asking the off-putting question "are you prepared to give evidence?" Pitt explains: "If you expect people to trust you, do you ever ask yourself why they should? You're saying 'stick your head above the parapet and maybe it won't get blown off'. You have to offer companionship, take them seriously.

"There'll be people saying 'Why in God's name are you doing this? Why are you drawing attention to yourself and to us?' They need to have someone who sees they are extraordinary and extraordinarily brave."

No timewasters, please
Dealing with nuisance is fraught not only with danger but with frustration, from the notoriously complex nature of ASBOs to the overwhelming workload of which many councils complain. But Pitt has no time for those who complain antisocial behaviour work is too difficult. He is impatient with those who are not as efficient as himself and his team. Tackling antisocial behaviour is cursed by "meeting-itis", he says. "You want someone who has a determination to act, not someone who will faff around God knows how many multi-agency meetings."

Each of Pitt's officers handles their own case. Some more lengthy ones might require the work of more than one officer, but tenants are not passed between different staff.

Pitt also bemoans the "mystification" of dealing with nuisance issues. "Big words will be used: 'the investigatory process', for example – this means sitting down with somebody and asking a series of questions."

Pitt holds his head in his hands more than once when talking about social landlords who aren't signed up to his sort of agenda. "The procedures are simple; if people take these steps one at a time they will be successful in dealing with antisocial behaviour. We are not talking here about Sherlock Holmes or Columbo. Fighting with other professionals who do not want to move the agenda forward is the least attractive part of the job."

One housing association manager says Pitt's criticism is unfair: "RSLs have widely differing resources and expertise compared to large authorities. It's not realistic to expect our front-line officers to do the same work as specialist teams."

Pitt's response to this is that organisations dealing with antisocial behaviour should be given more powers. For example, Manchester's team is currently exploring how to secure ASBOs on conviction. This would mean applying for an ASBO when someone is convicted, with it coming into force either immediately or when they leave prison.