What's the damage?

Housemark’s anti-social behaviour benchmarking system is the country’s leading tool to help social landlords measure and understand the ASB they are tackling on a day-to-day basis.

This is its fourth year in operation and the third annual report looking at totals and trends across the full range of measures benchmarked by users of the system.

ASB benchmarking club

• ASB benchmarking is more popular than ever – more organisations input more data in 2009/10 than ever before. Dataset sizes have more than doubled in benchmarked areas such as actions taken to tackle ASB.
• 94 per cent of benchmarking social landlords are engaged in partnerships with other agencies to reduce ASB.
• Landlords are becoming more sophisticated at recording ASB – two thirds now use a specialist ASB system or have integrated it with their housing management software – up from 58 per cent last year.

Caseload

• The number of cases taken on by users has remained stable - at around 70 cases a year per 1,000 properties.
• Organisations based in London and the South record fewer new cases of ASB than those in the Central and North regions.
• The average number of days to resolve ASB decreased very slightly – the median dropped from 68 days in 2008/09 to 65 days in 2009/10.

Types of anti-social behaviour

• Noise continues to be the main cause of ASB complaints - showing a year on year increase in most quarters.
• ASB differs between the regions - the North has the biggest proportion of garden nuisance whereas London has the largest share of loiterers.

Actions taken to tackle anti-social behaviour

• Early intervention by housing management continues to be the most effective method of stopping ASB - being used to resolve 76 per cent of cases in 2009/10.
• ABCs (Acceptable Behaviour Contracts) resolved nearly 10 times as many cases as ASBOs did in 2009/10.
• Demotions are rarely used – resolving just 0.1 per cent of cases in 2009/10.
• Eviction continues to be the ultimate sanction used in around 1 per cent of cases.

Outcomes

• Landlords stopped ASB occurring in 76 per cent of cases in 2009/10. ALMOs and local authorities resolve around 10 per cent more of their cases than housing associations.
• Just over a third of unresolved cases were closed due to lack of contact from the complainant.
• Only 10 per cent of perpetrators are complained about more than once.

Complainant satisfaction

• 82 per cent of complainants were satisfied with the way their complaint was dealt with.
• Complainants are less happy with the time it takes for their case to be investigated – on average 68 per cent were satisfied.
• There is a wide variation in satisfaction with the service complainants receive during their case.

Financial cost of anti-social behaviour

• The lowest spending 25 per cent of landlords pay out less than £35 per property tackling ASB each year.
• London-based landlords spend around double this figure - yet record fewer cases of ASB.
• Local authorities have the least expensive ASB services.
• The correlation between costs and other measures is weak - a high cost ASB service does not necessarily equate to better performance, satisfaction or take-up of new cases.

See below for the full report

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