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Nottingham City Homes is exploring powers to allow it to evict tenants whose children are caught carrying knives under new plans to reduce crime in the city.
The announcement was made at the launch of a new knife crime strategy earlier this week by council leaders and senior police officers, who said that the threat of losing their home acts as a “serious deterrent” for would-be offenders.
Craig Guildford, chief constable for Nottinghamshire Police, told local paper Nottinghamshire Live that it is about “putting pressure around peers and families” as police cannot “arrest their way out” of Nottingham’s knife crime problem.
Meanwhile Jon Collins, leader of Nottingham City Council, said: “All the evidence shows that the risk of losing your home, or your parents and grandparents losing their home, by being involved in this activity is a serious deterrent.
“This is one of the conditions in the tenancy agreement, which means that if someone in a property is – and they do not need to have been convicted – involved in knife crime, just like drug dealing or any kind of firearm issue, that gives Nottingham City Homes working with Nottingham City Council powers to seek eviction. We won’t accept it.”
A spokesperson for the council confirmed that the local authority was in discussions with its ALMO about how to implement the plan.
According to the most recent police figures there were 822 knife incidents in Nottingham during the 12 months to March 2018, compared to 742 offences in the previous year.
Earlier this year superintendent Nick Davies, one of the country’s top police officers who works in London, said families of gang members should be threatened with eviction. The strategy had previously been used after the London riots.