Gang warfare

We have noticed over the years a steady increase in gang presence on some of our estates, and this is a real cause of concern for residents and the police.

As the name implies, they act in a group and so, while it’s relatively easy to identify a gang member, it’s not so easy to link a particular one with a specific crime or incident of anti-social behaviour.

Hence the new clause we have introduced into all our tenancy agreements prohibiting anyone belonging to a gang from living in, or visiting, our homes.

It is not uncommon for a tenant’s son, for example, to be involved in gang-related anti-social behaviour in the area, and for the parents to blame other children, protest the innocence of their son and (often rightly) point out the lack of direct evidence linking the child to a crime.

But it is normally quite easy to identify which gang a child belongs to, and now the parents can be threatened with possession proceedings and/or an injunction to ensure that they exert parental control to make the child leave the gang. If they continue to shrug off their responsibilities, the new clause enables us to initiate proceedings against them.

We want to see a reduction of gang-related anti-social behaviour on our estates. Our main aim is to tackle the problem directly while having our residents maintain their tenancies. We don’t want to just move the problem onto another area, but to help family members to give up gang membership.

Already, we have found that existing tenants have had nothing but praise for the clause during the consultation period. The initial idea came from our head of legal services and is a great example of close working between our in-house legal and anti-social behaviour teams.

Matthew Fox is chief executive of Viridian housing association