Anti-social behaviour

Anti-social behaviour (ASB) is any unreasonable behaviour or action that interferes with a resident’s quiet enjoyment of their home or which adversely affects the quality of life of people within the local community.

Section 1 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 defines ASB as “behaviour which causes or is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more people who are not in the same household as the perpetrator”. This definition reinforces the idea that ASB is to some extent dependant on the tolerance and perception of the person affected.

ASB can encompass a wide range of activities, from those that cause minor nuisance or irritation to major incidents of harassment, threats or actual acts of violence.

Contact us

For enquiries relating to ASB you can contact us at antisocialbehaviour@warwickdc.gov.uk or on 01926 456010.

What the council can do to help with anti-social behaviour

You need to know what you can expect from us if you are experiencing anti-social behaviour. Antisocial behaviour minimum standards (86kb, PDF)

With the information you provide we can take steps to tackle anti-social behaviour including:

Sending advisory letters about problems at specific locations
Sending warning letters to the individual involved (or their parents) warning them about their behaviour
Issuing Acceptable Behaviour Contracts to individuals to stop unacceptable behaviour
Issuing Parental Responsibility Contracts to parents to prevent their children’s unacceptable behaviour
Helping to secure Orders from the Court including:

Parenting Orders - to ensure that parents take responsibility for their children’s actions
Anti Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) to stop an individuals anti-social behaviour
Anti Social Behaviour Injunctions (ASBIs) - an injunction imposed on an individual
Criminal Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (CRASBO) - like an ASBO which relates to a specific crime

What you can do

Be responsible for your own household and ensure you do not cause problems
Look out for your neighbours
Look after your neighbourhood
Record any incidents of nuisance and report them to the appropriate agency

Information for council tenants

The Anti-Social Behaviour Act of 2003 places a requirement on local authority landlords to publish a statement of policy and a summary of procedures explaining how it deals with anti-social behaviour for council tenants.

Tackling anti-social behaviour

Tackling ASB is the Warwick District Council community safety priority, one of three priorities for the South Warwickshire Community Safety Partnership and one of four priorities for Warwickshire. We use an early intervention approach aligned with the Government’s Respect agenda. Both Warwick District and Stratford District work to a shared protocol and in partnership with all relevant agencies to deal with ASB in South Warwickshire.

In April 2011 there was a change to the closing codes that Warwickshire Police use for ASB. The closing codes are ‘Environmental’, ‘Personal’ and ‘Nuisance’. With the exception of hoax calls classification of ASB incidents are unchanged but unfortunately this means that incidents reported prior to April 2011 are not comparable to those recorded post April. SWCSP used the period April 2011 to March 2012 as a baseline year for anti-social behaviour. There was a reduction of 1,261 incidents (20%) from 6,329 to 5,068. Similar but smaller reductions have been seen across Warwickshire but at present the reasons are unclear and as a result target setting will be deferred until November when we will have the first six months of directly comparable data. Around 21% of all ASB incidents were personal with 73% being Nuisance and only 6% Environmental.

The new categories were designed to support case management rather than an incident based approaches it encourages the management of risk and emphasises problem-solving. Warwick District was selected by Warwickshire Police as the pilot area for a new victim-centred ASB approach. All cases of personal ASB are risk- assessed and individuals scoring high on the matrix receive priority action to reduce that risk. The pilot commenced in February 2012 and will be reviewed at the end of May 2012.

Our success in modifying behaviour at first intervention is 89% (compared to a national average of 64%). In the period April 2011 to March 2012 there were 1,257 cases of criminal damage, a reduction of 294 (-19%) compared to the previous 12 month period. This is the lowest total since partnership working formally commenced in 1998. There were 8 fewer small deliberate fires (-6%) in the district in the same period. The new code definitions are as follows:

Personal - designed to identify ASB incidents that the caller, call-handler or anyone else perceives as either deliberately targeted at an individual or group or having an impact on an individual or group rather than the
community at large.

Nuisance - those incidents where an act, condition, thing or person causes trouble, annoyance, inconvenience, offence or suffering to the local community in general rather than to individual victims.

Environmental - deals with the interface between people and places. It includes incidents where individuals and groups have an impact on their surroundings including natural, built and social environments.

Download Adobe Reader
The viewer that is needed to display the pdf document(s) is free and may be downloaded from the Adobe Website.