By Christopher Halliday, Neighbourhood & Community Safety Manager, South Liverpool Homes

Providing a high quality anti-social behaviour (ASB) service is central to developing and maintaining great neighbourhoods. Scrutiny in delivering positive outcomes for those experiencing ASB has increased not just through customers but also through the role of the Housing Ombudsman and enhanced powers of the regulator.

With increasing customer expectations and a reduction in grassroots public services, social landlords must reimagine approaches and rethink traditional practises when preventing and tackling ASB.

In a compliance driven environment, it can be difficult not to become robotic in the handling of cases. It is critical that we listen to the voice of victims and witnesses, using their experiences to drive our actions.  At South Liverpool Homes (SLH) we put the victim’s voice at the heart of everything we do. We do this by listening to the concerns of victims and witnesses without judgement and ensuring approaches are embedded through culture, and not driven by stale, prescriptive procedures.

Increasing our understanding of the lived experience of those impacted by ASB and neighbourhood issues has led to improved outcomes and increased satisfaction and when things don’t go well, we are open to learning from complaints.

Embedding a victim-led culture

Changes to our policies and the roll out of ‘voice of the victim’ training to colleagues has helped us in our journey to ensuring that victims needs are at the core of our handling of ASB. Case reviews are carried out with the impact on the victim in mind and we have moved away from the temptation to categorise certain types of ASB as ‘low level’.

Whilst the incident itself may appear to be ‘low level’, the circumstances of the victim and the impact on them must be taken into consideration when determining the appropriate response.

Officers should instinctively assess the level of risk to victims and consider what support is appropriate. Whilst risk assessment matrices are a valuable tool in prompting questioning and documenting the level of risk, it is vital that they are used alongside the officer’s experience and instinct. Compliance documents cannot replace emotional and critical thinking.

Risk assessments may prompt officers to take specific actions in supporting victims, but these actions may also be appropriate even when the risk matrix score is low. Officers should feel empowered and be equipped to make decisions in the interest of victims and not limited by a risk assessment scores.

Empathy, resilience and a commitment to help others are equally as important as specialist case management skills.

Learning from complaints

When reviewing complaints from customers who were unhappy with the service they received, a common theme emerged – we needed to listen more.   This is not to say we did not follow procedures, or our ASB officers lacked the skills to manage a case, it was more about consideration of the individual needs of customers, as ASB impacts people in different ways.  Victims have varying levels of tolerance and resilience, and personal circumstances can influence how they feel when experiencing ASB issues.  Even when the issue is longstanding and cannot be completely resolved, we need to protect against becoming desensitised, see example.

Identifying trends through complaints is key. We must challenge behaviour and common trends that lead to mistrust and depowers victims. Valuable feedback shouldn’t be ignored and a deeper dive into your organisation’s approach to victims may be required.

In line with the Ombudsman’s spotlight on noise complaints (October 2022), we have developed a neighbourhood policy that separated noise reports that are not ASB from our ASB policy.  This has made it easier for employees to take a more measured, solution-based approach to noise reports that does not pitch one neighbour against the other.  Our employees are now trained to use the correct terminology to ensure residents understand what constitutes ASB and how this differs from transferable living noise. This is critical to managing customer expectations and for achieving successful case outcomes.

Vulnerable witness procedure

Another change we are making is developing a vulnerable witness procedure in collaboration with customers, which increases the range of support we can provide to anyone reporting ASB.   We believe this is important so that support is not ‘lost’ within ASB policies, and it is front and centre of all investigations. This procedure will ensure we not only focus on the behaviour, but the harm it is causing.

We have also introduced a witness and victim champion who will act as an advocate for victims.   This gives the victim an opportunity to speak to someone independent to explain why they feel unhappy with any aspect of the way the case is being handled.

We complete three-month case reviews so that we can identify any dissatisfaction during the case and respond appropriately, in real time.

Outcomes and success

SLH is a small community-based provider, and we are committed to delivering high levels of community investment in the areas we serve. We focus on empowering people to have a voice and the voice of the victim is critical to our efforts to build and maintain strong communities.

Our transactional feedback gives us a real time understanding and satisfaction levels currently sit at 81% since April 2024. Still room for improvement.

Our tenant satisfaction measure performances are currently in the upper quartile in all related areas:

Listening to views and acting upon them: 80%

Treat fairly and with respect: 94%

Make positive contribution to neighbourhood: 88%

Approach to handling of anti-social behaviour: 86%

We still have lots of areas to improve on, we will continue our journey, ensuring that changes are driven by the experience of those who live in the areas we serve.