Anti-Social Behaviour Advice

Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) is defined as ‘behaviour by a person which causes, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same household as the person.’

There are three main categories for ASB, depending on how many people are affected:

• Personal – when a person targets a specific individual or group.
• Nuisance – when a person causes trouble, annoyance or suffering to a community.
• Environmental – when a person’s actions affect the wider environment, such as public spaces.

Examples of ASB include:

• Rowdy or nuisance neighbours, which covers parking disputes, abusive language, playing loud music.
• Vehicle nuisance, such as cars driving up and down the street bothering other drivers.
• Animal problems, which involves any situation where animals are creating a nuisance e.g. uncontrolled animals, barking and intimidation by an animal.

Your tenancy agreement means you must:

• not cause a nuisance to your neighbours or anyone living in the area;
• take responsibility for the behaviour of anyone visiting or living with you;
• speak to the people causing a problem and try to sort things out between you; and
• respect your neighbours.

If you believe you are experiencing ASB and you’ve already tried speaking to the people involved, please get in touch with us. We’ll tell you about other ways to help the situation, such arranging mediation between you and your neighbour. You can also contact your local authority’s Environmental Health Officer, who will ask you to take notes and keep a diary of all incidents.

Diaries are a useful tool for you to write down details of anti-social behaviour incidents, this is because the information can be used by us to help resolve the problem.