More resident involvement needed to tackle ASB

A new report, based on a survey of social landlords, identifies the potential for increasing resident involvement in tackling anti-social behaviour (ASB).

The report, 'Working with residents and communities to tackle ASB' was launched at the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) annual conference on 22 June.

Over the last two decades tackling ASB and its underlying causes has been a priority for landlords and residents. There has been an increasing recognition of the critical role that communities can play in supporting landlords to tackle ASB and in response to this CIH surveyed landlords to better understand existing practice. Many landlords identified positive work to involve residents but a number of areas for development emerge from the survey.

Key findings include:
*Methods to capture tenants' views are changing with new and innovative mechanisms emerging, although this is inconsistent across landlords. Tenant scrutiny panels for ASB are only used by 56 per cent of landlords.
*Direct involvement of residents in deciding how perpetrators should be dealt with is still in the early stages of development with only 11 per cent of landlords using community justice panels.
*There is some evidence of training residents to enable them to effectively participate but this is an area which needs to be extended and developed if residents are to take a more active role in new initiatives.
*Most landlords feel their communication strategies for resident involvement are strong but a fifth identifies the need for improvements in delivery.
*A majority of landlords feel that they are effectively collecting information to understand the needs of customers but a third recognise this as an area for improvement. In addition the information collected is not being widely used to shape services.

The report, which includes references to practice examples, will be used by CIH's ASB Action Team to inform the team's approach to working with landlords, residents and other partners. In particular, the government funded Action Team will work with existing and emerging tenant panels and their landlords to drive the development and delivery of effective locally focused ASB services.

The report will also be used to support and influence national policy and practice agendas and to further identify and share effective practice.