Customer service charter: Anti-social behaviour
Brent Housing Partnership (BHP) manages tenanted and leasehold properties for Brent Council. We are committed to improving the quality of life for all our customers. The anti-social behaviour team is working to deal with anti-social behaviour that takes place in and around the council's properties.
Anti-social behaviour may be:
- Using the council's property for unlawful purposes
- racial harassment
- noise nuisance
- graffiti
- using aggressive or threatening language and behaviour
- dumping rubbish
Preventing anti-social behaviour
BHP has a clear policy and system for dealing with anti-social behaviour.
We will:
- Make it clear to tenants and leaseholders that anti-social behaviour is not acceptable
- demonstrate by our actions that we will not tolerate anti-social behaviour
- encourage people to respect the needs of others.
Dealing with anti-social behaviour
If it should become necessary for you to report a problem, we will:
- Acknowledge every reported incident within 5 working days
- acknowledge racial harassment and serious cases involving violence within 24 hours
- allocate your complaint to a case worker within 3 working days
- aim to quickly identify and interview both parties within 10 working days
- offer advice, mediation and support to resolve the nuisance
- discuss difficult cases at the nuisance intervention panel
- if necessary, take legal action against the offending party.
It may be that the offending resident is vulnerable, for example the person may have mental health problems. We will still investigate the complaint and take action to stop the anti-social behaviour. The vulnerable person may be referred to other agencies for support.
If the offending resident is vulnerable or where the offending person admits fault, we will try to provide support to change the person's behaviour. We may use an Acceptable Behaviour Contract.
Legal action
It may be that after the complaint has been investigated and mediation and support have been provided, that the anti-social behaviour continues. In cases such as this BHP will have no option but to take legal action
If necessary we may:
- Obtain an injunction with power of arrest
- obtain a dispersal order or crack house closure
- serve an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO)
- look at eviction or enforcing the terms of the lease.
Working in partnership
To enable us to continue providing quality services, BHP encourages customers to provide comments, complaints and feedback about services. Service improvement is important to BHP. Together we can find ways to improve the quality of life for our customers by preventing and taking action to prevent anti-social behaviour.
We will:
- Publicise the anti-social behaviour procedure to encourage victims to make complaints
- work with residents to resolve nuisance
- provide an annual report on nuisance and harassment to the area housing boards
- give the results of consultation in our publications
- display this information in our public offices.
How to contact us
If you are concerned about anti-social behaviour, please contact the anti-social behaviour team:
- Telephone 020 8937 2951 from 9am - 5pm
- visit our webpages
- confidential hotline 020 8451 5050 from 3pm - midnight
- out-of-hours emergency 020 8937 1234 from 3am - 8am
- email asb@bhphousing.co.uk