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The Anti-social
Behaviour Bill – will it deliver for communities?
A new government
Bill seeks to tackle anti-social behaviour by introducing a range
of enforcement measures. These include new powers for social landlords
and a planned consultation on cutting the housing benefit of anti-social
tenants. Adam Sampson asks whether the Government’s
approach will work.
The Government
is right to tackle anti-social behaviour. We all know the devastating
effects intimidating behaviour, crime and neighbourhood nuisance
can have on communities. And we all know that it only takes a few
people in a neighbourhood to destroy a sense of safety and community
cohesion that we want from our home environment. The question is
whether the Government’s approach in its new anti-social legislation
will work. And if not, what are the solutions?
The Government’s
strategy for tackling anti-social behaviour was set out in the White
Paper, Respect and Responsibility: taking a stand against anti-social
behaviour. The Bill, which had its second reading in April,
contains a raft of enforcement measures, including a range of new
powers for social landlords to address behaviour. The Government
also plans a consultation on new powers to cut housing benefit from
tenants found guilty of anti-social behaviour. We believe these
sanctions will be counter-productive. They will make people more
likely to be evicted and become homeless.
Where
there are children, making them homeless causes damage across
all aspects of their lives
Shelter’s primary
argument is that making people homeless does not solve anti-social
behaviour and works directly against strategies to tackle poverty
and homelessness. Whilst it is, of course, right that crime be punished,
punitive sanctions alone will not make people respect their neighbours
nor tackle the underlying issues that cause the behaviour in the
first place. And choosing a punishment that makes people homeless
simply moves the problem to another neighbourhood – everyone
has to live somewhere and the local authority in many cases would
have a legal obligation to house the families. And where there are
children, making them homeless causes damage across all aspects
of their lives, from their education to their health to their self-esteem.
In many cases,
we are talking about damaged families with histories of problems.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that over two-thirds of defendants
in anti-social behaviour cases have special needs and other serious
problems, such as mental illness, drug or alcohol dependency or
have suffered physical or sexual abuse in the past. In a study at
the Dundee Families Project, which works intensively with families
with anti-social behaviour issues, over half of the children had
experienced some form of neglect or abuse, over half of the women
had been the victims of domestic violence and half the mothers were
prescribed anti-depressants. In cases that Shelter has dealt with,
people have been targeted unfairly because of the behaviour of ex-partners
or visitors. Shelter has seen clients threatened with eviction for
nuisance because of violence and sexual abuse by a partner.
Where a household is evicted, problems can escalate – for the
family members who have not done anything wrong, as well as those
who are supposedly being punished. Shelter runs a project in Sheffield
supporting families who have become homeless, often due to eviction
because a member has behavioural problems. The other family members
are forced to live in unsuitable temporary accommodation and may
move schools and leave their support networks behind. In turn, their
own problems escalate as their education, health and self-esteem
plummet.
So what is to be done? Shelter believes this problem should be tackled
through a more effective balance between prevention, support and
resettlement, alongside existing sanctions, which are already in
place. Giving up on families with behavioural problems will never
be the answer.
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Prevention
Small-scale disputes can escalate quickly. The evidence is
that early intervention is effective. Nottingham’s mediation
service, for example, works to avoid costly enforcement action.
Over two-thirds of the disputes it dealt with last year were
cleared up effectively. ‘Acceptable behaviour contracts’ have
been successfully piloted and are now being used in a number
of local authorities. They work through a voluntary agreement
signed by the individual. Failure to comply can lead to eviction
or an anti-social behaviour order.
Our experience
is that there is a lack of understanding and expertise about
how to use current remedies. As a result, interventions can
be inconsistent, badly targeted and not made early enough.
This experience is backed up by findings from the Social Exclusion
Unit and the Chartered Institute of Housing. Local authorities
with dedicated officers, specialist teams and multi-agency
partnerships have been successful in both supporting victims
and tackling the problem.
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Support
Vulnerable people need support to manage relationships and
maintain their tenancies. Effective support services, like
Shelter’s Homeless to Home project that work with families
after they have been housed to help them settle into their
community, can minimise behavioural problems. Through the
Supporting People programme and homelessness strategies, local
authorities should be developing these kinds of services and
central government has a role to promote them.
Shelter
deals with both the victims and the perpetrators of anti-social
behaviour. As an attempt to tackle this growing problem we
set up a pilot scheme with the local authority in Rochdale
- called the Inclusion Project. Rochdale’s social housing
has high rates of turnover and neighbourhoods can quickly
spiral into decline if they become known for having an anti-social
behaviour problem and households begin moving out.
The Inclusion
Project works with families to resolve behavioural problems
and prevent eviction. Behavioural issues are raised with the
households who themselves enter into an agreement with the
Project. Other stakeholders – social services, the community
safety team and social landlords – are all involved.
The Project went live in September 2002 and while it is early
days, the households have all engaged positively, none have
been evicted and the number of complaints from neighbours
has been significantly reduced.
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Resettlement
There is no evidence that evicting people changes their behaviour.
In contrast, there is evidence that resettlement schemes work.
The Dundee Families Project is a residential scheme that works
intensively with families with behavioural problems. It has
so far helped 80 families, none of whom have been evicted since
leaving the scheme, despite the fact that many of them had been
evicted several times before and had not managed to change their
behaviour. The evaluation of the Project also showed that it
has widespread backing locally and was good value for money. |
There is already
legislation in place that, if used effectively, can deal with the
persistent offenders who refuse to take responsibility for their
action. Injunctions, possession orders, anti-social behaviour orders
and introductory tenancies are already in place. The Homelessness
Act also contained new powers to refuse accommodation to an applicant
where anti-social behaviour is an issue. Indeed, the Government’s
own consultation paper last year admitted that social landlords
already have strong powers available to them.
Following the publication of the Anti-social Behaviour Bill, a coalition
of organisations, including the Local Government Association, the
Association of Police Authorities, Shelter, Help the Aged, Groundwork
and the Children’s Society, united to urge the Government to balance
the need for enforcement with measures to deliver long-term prevention.
These are not maverick organisations on a mission to undermine government.
These are bodies that work with government across a range of policies,
welcome much that it has achieved and have a wealth of experience
on the ground of what works. Rather than looking for confrontation,
we want to help deliver the measures in the Bill that will work,
and work with the Government to amend those that won’t.
Some
elements of the Anti-social Behaviour Bill may only cause the
deepening of divisions within communities
There are no
quick fixes to this problem. Communities work when employment is
available for all those who are able to work, when housing is decent
and affordable, when local schools and services are available and
transport systems in place, and when policing effectively keeps
crime down. Only when all those aspects are brought together do
people feel they have a stake in their community and a responsibility
to respect those around them. Delivering that is no mean feat and
the Government is to be congratulated on its wider policies of reducing
child poverty, tackling homelessness, creating routes into work
and investment in public services.
However, these
successes should not be jeopardised because of understandable pressures
to show results on anti-social behaviour. Some elements of the Anti-social
Behaviour Bill may only cause the deepening of divisions within
communities. We hope the Government will think again.
Adam Sampson
is Director of Shelter
Poverty 115,
Summer 2003
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