Antisocial Behaviour
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Hyndburn Homes is committed to tackling antisocial behavior within our neighbourhoods. The definition we use for antisocial behaviour is:
"Anything which interferes with the peaceful enjoyment of the home and surrounding area of anyone living or visiting our neighbourhoods."
If you witness any antisocial or would like to contact our Antisocial Behaviour Team please email us: ASB@hyndburnhomes.co.uk
Telephone: 0345 675 1131
Orbis out of hours: 0845 223 3097
The operator will advise you on the next course of action.
If you are experiencing antisocial behaviour you should start to keep diaries of the problems you are encountering for diary log sheets please click here.
How is my complaint dealt with?
When you report an incident or make a complaint we assess the nature of the problem and a decision is made to pass the case to the relevant section.
Complaints regarding dirty or unkempt garden environmental nuisance and low level nuisance will be dealt with by the Neighbourhood Team.
Cases involving noise, harassment, anti-social behaviour or crime will be passed to the Antisocial Behaviour Team where the case will be dealt with by one of the ASB Investigators.
All cases are kept confidential and advice and support is given at all stages of the investigation.
How do we investigate a case?
We have two investigators whose job it is to get to the bottom of your complaint, they will handle a case from start to finish and carry out all the necessary interviews and investigations.
We do not work in isolation we regularly involve:
Our main partner in ASB cases is Lancashire Police, specifically the Neighbourhood teams based in Accrington and Great Harwood Police Stations. Click here to find the offices in your area (enter your postcode in the "My Neighbourhood" section).
What action can we take?
The priority is to STOP THE HARM.
Actions may be just having a “quiet word,” mediation between complainants and perpetrators, warnings through to notices of intent to take legal action, demotion orders, injunctions, through to eviction.
In some cases it may be useful to put in support packages to assist with families who struggle to look after their children and cause havoc in an area.
Evictions are seen as a last resort but where appropriate possession action have been and will continue to be taken.
Sometimes we may not be the best people to act; there are many powers available to various agencies that can solve a problem. We cannot investigate drug dealing for instance, but we do pass on information. Environmental Health staff can serve notices on people for environmental crime something we cannot do at present. So there will be occasions when another agency takes the lead in resolving an issue and we do and have used evidence provided by other agencies to evict drug dealers and people involved in other crime.
What results have we had?
Since taking over Hyndburn Councils housing stock in April 2006 the ASB team has dealt with over 138 cases. Of these:
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122 were resolved without the need to take legal action
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6 were resolved by legal action
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10 were unresolved due to the unwillingness of witnesses to give evidence
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31 complaints were investigated but no evidence could be found
At any time the team may have thirty to forty cases under investigation or being monitored.
In addition staff target known perpetrators to prevent problems reoccurring and look at security issues in and around our sheltered schemes. Recommendations are made on crime prevention, design of new build schemes and improvements in lighting.
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