SLCNG Awards 2011

It was another successful conference this year, with a record number of attendees and a great awards dinner at the St John’s Hotel, Solihull.

Mike and Kate attended the two-day conference and were delighted to see so many delegates contributing to the discussions, sharing both concerns and good practice. There was a general feeling of organisations doing so much for communities and applying the localism bill; however, the tools aren’t always available to complete work.

It was disappointing that Minister Grant Shapps was unable to attend at the last hour; delegates were looking forward to getting some answers for some of their long-standing questions. Baroness Helen Newlove proved to be a worthy replacement, speaking of her tragic loss and work she does to help communities tackle anti-social behaviour. However, there was a general feeling that questions couldn’t be asked of Baroness Newlove – landlords want answers and guidance from government about the direction of tackling ASB.

And the winner is…

Powerful video clips were shown of the shortlisted nominees for the SLCNG Awards 2011, prior to the awards ceremony. With 300 people in attending the dinner, there was both passion and interest in the room for the work on display.

• The Team Award, sponsored by ourselves went to North Tyneside Homes Safer Estates Team
• The Residents Award, sponsored by Glasgow Housing Association went to Daniel Lusardi and Rhys Farthing, Homes for Islington.
• The Best Practice Award, sponsored by HouseMark went to Contour Homes, Victims Champion Project.
• And the Tim Winter Award, sponsored by SLCNG went to Linda Alcock New Progress Housing Association.

Congratulations to all four categories and to the runners-up.  The work that is being done is fantastic.

An entertaining after dinner speaker, Chief Political Correspondent for Radio 5 Live, John Pienaar completed a great first day at SLCNG Conference 2011.

 By Kate Hill

Tackling ASB: the new reality

Social housing providers have tackled anti-social behaviour on their estates for decades – but their work is often under-represented or ignored. With fresh legislation proposed and the advent of the Police and Crime Commissioners, it is a good time to take stock and see how the situation can be improved.

Social Landlord’s Crime & Nuisance Group (SLCNG)  has just issued a new briefing document, looking at ways in which landlords and Government can work together effectively. Their recommendations range from information-sharing and the use of the landlord’s consortia to consistent strategy and planning from the Government. Along with the new RESPECT charter, the recommendations offer a realistic framework for the year ahead.

The document also has case studies from SLCNG members, such as Liverpool Mutual Homes, Glasgow Housing Association and the Coventry consortium. Together, they demonstrate what can be achieved when councils, police and housing providers work together on ASB issues.

Download the PDF: Facing up to a new reality for ASB

Calling for nominations: SLCNG awards & conference

The SLCNG annual conference is an important must for all ASB practitioners and takes place at the St. Johns Hotel, Solihull near Birmingham on 1^st and 2^nd November.

An integral part of the conference is the Awards Ceremony which takes place at the conference dinner on the evening of the first day – Tuesday 1^st November. There are four awards:-

The Tim Winter Award

This award is open to any employee of an SLCNG member organisation who has gone above and beyond their remit and has tackled anti-social behaviour effectively. This could be someone who has been innovative, someone who has been creative or someone who has simply been determined and inspirational.

The Best Practice Award (sponsored by HouseMark)

This award is open to any project or initiative demonstrating measurable improvement in reducing anti-social behaviour and increasing community confidence. The project or initiative may be specific to a particular neighbourhood or may be targeted on a particular client group or issue. For example, teams working with vulnerable witnesses, young people or ex-offenders; or teams that focus on local priorities such as burglary, arson and hate crime, would all be eligible.

The Residents Award (sponsored by Glasgow Housing Association)

Standing up against anti – social behaviour requires exceptional courage. This award recognises the bravery and courage of an individual or a group of local residents who have taken a personal stand against antisocial behaviour.

The Team Award (sponsored by ReACT)

This award is for a group or a team that has provided an exceptional service in resolving antisocial behaviour in a specific neighbourhood. The team could be located within a single organisation or be drawn from across a range of local agencies and the community. The judges are looking for a team that has worked together to achieve shared goals and can demonstrate measurable results.

The closing date for nominations is Friday 2^nd September so time for your nomination is fast running out!

Full information and the application form is available at www.slcng.org.uk/event/49

The new approach to handling complaints of ASB

The police want to share ASB information - but how? (Image by yabokz via Flickr)

Having now attended two SLCNG Regional Meetings (Wales and Midlands) where senior police officers gave presentations on their intentions for call handling from 1^st April, I am greatly heartened by what I heard.

Most readers will know that the Home Office has selected eight police forces to trial a new method of receiving and recording complaints of ASB with an emphasis on identifying vulnerable people. As part of these pilots, which will run for 3 months, the existing definitions will be reduced to just 3 – Personal threat (individual), Nuisance (community) and Environmental. The identification of vulnerable people, both victims and perpetrators, will be a priority and arranging support where appropriate, will be initiated. The police will also be expected to carry out proper investigations rather than just drive around and report “no contact”. It is to their credit that the police are actually saying that they have got it wrong in the past, mainly due to the target driven policing policy which existed not so long ago.

Police call handlers and response officers are to be trained in the new ways and there is a commitment to the sharing of information with partners, including social housing landlords. In my opinion, here lies a problem. Firstly there is no mechanism for the proper sharing of important information between the various agencies; most police are unaware of the role of social landlords in dealing with ASB and there is criticism of the way in which many CDRPs operate –  most with no meaningful input from social landlords. The police also acknowledge that there are major hurdles to overcome with data protection.

The police say they need to find a way to share information and look to IT suppliers for the answer with a national database of people vulnerable because of ASB. Let’s get real – the chances of this happening are NIL!

Budgets are so tight or non-existent and most local authorities and housing associations already have systems in place and will not take kindly to being forced into changing or entering the same information twice. What’s needed is integration between existing systems to identify the vulnerable and with current technology this must, surely, be worth investigating. This will, of course, mean that IT suppliers will need to work together to find a workable solution – I think we should play our part and grasp the nettle!

By Mike Blomer

Beyond the ASBO

We still await Governments proposals for the future of ASBOs but the results of a recent SLCNG survey of members on the subject are quite interesting. Although the response rate was low and not, therefore, statistically significant as a reliable measure or indicator of the views of the SLCNG membership as a whole, the comments received demonstrated a high degree of commonality.

The questions asked were:-

• If the ASBO were to be repealed, what would be the implications for your organisation in tackling anti-social behaviour?
• Does your ASB profiling support the view that most ASB is committed by young people or does it present a different picture?

And the responses:-

• ASBOs are used “not at all or “very sparingly”

• Landlords who use ASBOs find them very effective”

• ‘Improve not abandon’ was the recommendation of one landlord who said that “a very simple process has been over complicated by the burden of proof and amount of evidence required.”

• Most landlords favoured ASBIs over ASBOs

• Some landlords were concerned about the attention focussed on breach rates (for ASBOs) and suggested that more emphasis be placed on the considerable positive impact and relief provided to those numerous people who can now live in comfort as a result of ASBOs

• Several respondents were “relaxed” about the potential loss of the ASBO (presumably due to ‘low’ or ‘nil’ usage)

• Others were concerned that the loss of the ASBO would leave them without a remedy to use against minors in appropriate circumstances

• Only a small minority of cases were recorded by landlords as being perpetrated by young people.

• Conversely, the majority of known alleged perpetrators were said to be adults

• One landlord reported that females significantly outnumber males, as both perpetrators and as victims of anti-social behaviour.

With acknowledgements to Eamon Lynch SLCNG

HouseMark ASB Benchmarking Conference 2010

Many of you may have attended the HouseMark Anti Social Behaviour Benchmarking Conference last week where Peter Jackson, SLCNG chaired the day; we heard from the new ASB Action Team, Year-end results from the HouseMark Team, amongst good practice examples and news on the HouseMark/SLCNG ASB accreditation scheme.

I spoke about the new ASB Action Team that has been set up by the CIH and funded by CLG a couple of weeks ago, after listening to their update, it looks like they are making rapid progress in meeting their objectives to share good practice and shout about innovative ideas to tackle ASB. They have visited a number of customers already and have had positive feedback, to arrange your session with the new team, visit the website http://www.cih.org/asbactionteam/.

HouseMark year-end figures highlight and reflect the huge amount of great work housing associations and social landlords are doing across the UK to case manage ASB complaints; we can see a rise in the number of people benchmarking year on year, bringing it to the fourth year  in operation. A few comments here for you; however, if you would like to view the report and see the detailed figures, take a look at www.housemark.co.uk

• 94% of benchmarking social landlords are engaged in partnership work with external agencies to reduce ASB
• Landlords are becoming more advanced at recording ASB, two thirds now use specialist ASB systems like ReACT
• Noise still remains the main cause of ASB – showing a year on year increase in most quarters
• ASB differs between regions – the North has the biggest proportion of garden nuisance whereas London has the largest share of loiterers

It was a great day at Coventry; as you know, it’s always good to hear of others highlights and working methods in this field. Liz Ellis, ASB & Caretaking Services Manager from Stockport Homes spoke about how Stockport Homes strived to achieve, yet again a three star ASB Service.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts and comments about the results, the conference, the new ASB Action Team or good practice that is being shared; you can contact us here via the blog or email me kateh@e-b-s.co.uk.

CIH Annual Conference 2010 Review

Kate, Mike and Paul on the ReACT stand at Harrogate

 

by  Mike Blomer  

The social housing world held its annual get together in Harrogate from the 21^st-24^th June with delegates and exhibitors alike speculating about what would be in store for us during the next few years. We had already heard that the TSA would probably fall victim to Government cut backs, that VAT would increase and benefits are to be cut. So with all of this in the background what would conference be like? And would the rumours of the conference leaving Harrogate in favour of Manchester turn out to be true?  

(We now understand that the conference will stay in Harrogate for the next 2 years, with the organisational responsibility moving to the CIH Events Team).  

Matching last year, ReACT shared a stand in Hall A with the Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group. This arrangement again proved to be very successful with Kate Hill, Paul Johns and myself ensuring that our part of the stand was staffed at all times. Tuesday morning proved to be the busiest period with the largest number of visitors to the stand over the three days of the event. It was certainly apparent that both delegate and visitor numbers were down on previous years – I will be interested to know the organisers take on this opinion.  

With  threat of cuts in allowances and development funding, we did not expect anti social behaviour to have a particularly high priority – but it did have an airing in the context of deprived communities and David Cameron’s “big society”.  

 The minister was not all that forthcoming. He confirmed that the TSA would be subject to early review (seemingly confirming its demise) and that the housing function of the Local Government Ombudsman could be merged with the Housing Ombudsman Service. In fact he gave a typical politicians address, saying much and giving nothing. We now await the autumn review.  

The social side of the Harrogate Conference was alive and well and, surprisingly for some, dominated by England v Slovenia in the World Cup! Even the conference agenda was temporarily suspended and the game shown live on a big screen in the main hall, with free alcoholic refreshments on offer to the 200 or so watching.  

I was invited by CIH to speak at the Ideas Exchange on “the use of systems for tackling ASB”. Open to exhibition visitors the session was held on all three days. First day there were 20 attending, 18 on day two and on the last day; 22, so it was not overwhelming. But any publicity etc., etc.  

ReACT Team Member Kate Hill, attending Harrogate for the first time said:-  

“Having heard so much about Harrogate my expectations were high and I was a little concerned I might have been let down. To my delight, it truly lived up to all the hype and talk I’d heard; a great buzz surrounded the halls, along with a true reflection of the positive attitudes in the housing industry despite the concerns ahead.   

I’m already looking forward to next year!”

CIH Event – Landlords Tools and Powers to Tackle ASB

 Held at the new CIH meeting, training and conference facility in Grays Inn Road London the event was sold out with some 50 delegates hearing from SLCNG, TSA, Audit Commission, HouseMark and presentations from West Mercia Police, Buckles Solicitors, Poplar HARCA and New Charter Housing.

We are all waiting to learn what our new Government has in store in respect of ASB but in the meantime it’s business as usual. TSA is actively promoting the ASB Action Squad and Local Partnerships, whilst the Audit Commission covered the new inspection framework and hot topics such as the impact of recession, tenancy fraud, the respect standard, dangerous dogs and policing.

For me the highlight was the presentation from a senior officer of West Mercia Police, beginning with an admission that the police service nationally has failed to give the attention to ASB that it deserves and requires. It was heartening to hear that ACPO and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary are now majoring on the problem of definition, the context of ASB and vulnerability within modern policing and recognising the challenges.

West Mercia is taking a lead in protecting vulnerable people with a pilot scheme running in their North Worcestershire Division and working with local landlord Community Housing Group. This includes trialing the Risk Assessment Matrix currently being promoted by the Home Office.  In due course, this could become a recommended national standard with a requirement that information is shared between all partners.

Lets us hope that it happens and the initiative is not lost in Government cost saving measures.

SCLNG Awards now open

2009 SCLNG award winners

Nominations to the Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group’s 2010 awards are now open. Four awards are available for front-line staff who make a real difference to their communities by tackling anti-social behaviour.

 

They include:

 

The Tim Winter award – for exceptional performance by an employee of a SLCNG member organisation in tackling anti-social behaviour and making a real and sustained difference to an person or a community.

 

The best practice award sponsored by HouseMark – for a project or initiative demonstrating measurable improvement in reducing antisocial behaviour and increasing community confidence.

 

The residents award – for outstanding achievement by an individual resident or a group of residents in combatting anti-social behaviour.

 

The group award – sponsored by ReACT for exemplary practice by a group or a team in resolving ASB incidents or issues in a specific neighbourhood and delivering measurable results.

 

Entries are to be judged by an Awards Panel based on the information provided for each of the nominations received.

 

The closing date for receipt of entries is 10^th September 2010.

 

Winners will be announced and awards presented at the Conference Dinner on 02 November 2010 at the SLCNG Annual Conference in Birmingham.

 

More information together with an entry form is included at pages 3- 7 of this bulletin. Further copies can be obtained from the SLCNG website or by emailing nick@slcng.org.uk.