Respect ‘no longer a priority’
Anti-social behaviour has fallen down the government’s agenda since the respect task force was disbanded in late 2007, a social landlords group has told the home secretary.
The Social Landlords’ Crime and Nuisance Group wrote to Alan Johnson to complain that government agencies had stopped working together to fight the problem since the decline of the respect agenda.
Peter Jackson, managing director of the group, said: ‘Post-respect, we had the previous home secretary admit that the government took its eye off the anti-social behaviour ball and said that mistakes were made. Clearly more leadership was required.’
He added that the police dominated local partnerships to tackle anti-social behaviour in some areas and did not understand the work of social landlords on the issue. The Home Office tended to over emphasise the use of anti-social behaviour orders at the expense of preventative and early intervention measures, he added.
In reply, Mr Johnson said: ‘It would not be right for any agency to drive their own agenda at the expense of others.’ He added that anti-social behaviour had not dropped down the government’s list of priorities since the disbanding of the respect task force.
He pointed to services such as the 30 workshops delivered by the Home Office’s anti-social behaviour team, the Actionline and website and said that statistics showed a trend towards the use of tools other than anti-social behaviour orders.
Mr Jackson said he was pleased that Mr Johnson saw the importance of agencies co-operating. But he still felt that ‘the high level of police accountability within the Home Office… will tend to give the police the dominant role within local partnerships’.
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Readers' comments (2)
worried well | 11/09/2009 3:34 pm
30 workshops? - tick the box!
That'll do it then problem solved.
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Bill Kinderman | 22/10/2009 2:48 pm
I attended one of these Home Office workshops and half the delegates walked out after the moring session . The quality of presentations was generally poor, there was basically nothing new on the table. I got the impression that Respect has very much fallen down the list of priorities and sincerely wonder if the Government really has got the will and the wit to infuse new life into the ASB agenda? I tend to agree with Alan Jackson's observation , local CRDP's are often heavily dominated by Policing priorities and whilst this in itself is not a bad thing, partners like social Landlords sometimes get treated like agents for local Police rather than true partners with a say in things.
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