Expertise is vital when tackling ASB

The writer says ‘recently, a private tenant, who has a mild psychiatric illness’, complained about his upstairs neighbours. In this context, the anti-social behaviour outlined is in fact noise nuisance - there is a difference.

There is also a difference between an anti-social tenant who likes to jump about at 2am while playing thumping music and a tenant who may have psychotic episodes who might throw chairs against the wall. These two different tenant types need a different response.

Whatever the reason, the disturbance for neighbours will be equally distressing, but all three tenant types will receive the same noise-complaint response from the majority of social landlords.

Vis-a-vis the upstairs neighbours described as being noisy at all hours. Many tenants described in this way are just going about their normal living. They may just be housed in poorly converted, laminated floor properties with no carpet-fitting clauses. This will instantly create noise nuisance.

Would the social landlords not be better off to ensure sound-proofing or floor covering to at least assist in prevention rather than endless staff hours spent on form filling?

‘How do you judge who is telling the truth?’ In the case cited, both are telling their truth and both have a valid complaint but for different reasons.
In assessing the truth, how does a housing officer make a reasonable judgement and put their own prejudices and opinions aside? For example, when dealing with something like a complaint about children kicking a ball about near tenants’ windows, the ‘truth’ of housing officers with children will often have a very different ‘truth’ from those that don’t.

Of course, if the complainant already has ‘form’ over another tenancy matter, forget it. Ditto, if the tenant’s complaints flags up issues of housing staff incompetence, yet tenants’ only hope is measured feedback to a housing office.

The 24/7 team the writer mentions is positive as is the columnist’s acknowledgment that housing officers are ill-equipped to deal with ASB. Perhaps there is a variance of attitudes between different councils and other social landlords, in that very few have 24/7 teams.

In the cases of both ASB and noise complaints, it would serve staff well to sit in adjoining properties at 2am (unannounced) before they can really make a judgement and to understand the impact of both ASB and noise nuisance.

Housing officers are not social police but neither should they expect their jobs to be straightforward. However, they are often out of their depth when expected to make judgements based on situations and, on occasion, people that require specialist assessment and expertise.

K Phillips, social housing tenant