How do we deal with anti-social behaviour and harassment?
When you report anti-social behaviour or harassment, we have a commitment to:
- Take your complaint seriously.
- Carry out a thorough investigation.
- Resolve it as quickly as possible and find a lasting solution.
- Keep you informed of progress – contacting you at least once a fortnight until the case is closed.
- Give you advice, support and guidance throughout our investigation.
- Regularly review our progress with your complaint.
- Resolve the situation without moving anyone or taking legal action.
- Work in partnership with other organisations and agencies.
- Get both sides of the story – we will contact the person you have complained about and give them a chance to change their behaviour.
- Keep your details confidential unless you give us permission to share them with other people or organisations.
- Take steps to tackle the root cause of the problem – this may include mediation or finding the right support to help people address their problems
- Take swift enforcement action where a serious incident has occurred or when people do not change their behaviour.
- Contact you in-person before closing your case and ensure you understand why.
- Ask for your views on how we dealt with your complaint
|
 |
Investigating your complaint
- When you first report antisocial behaviour or harassment to us we will ask you for full details of what has happened
- The information you give us will help us decide what action we can take. For example, we may be able to speak to the person responsible straight away
- If a serious incident has occurred, and we need to take action immediately, we may ask you to give us a witness statement to pass to our legal team.
- If we cannot take action straight away, we will explain the reasons why and what we need to do next.
We may ask:-
- What has happened?
- When did it happen?
- Where did it happen?
- Did you see who did it? If so, do you know who they are or can you describe them?
- Did anyone witness it?
- How did it affect you?
- Is it the first incident or has it been going on for a while?
- Have you reported the incident(s) to anyone else - for example, the Police?
Incident Diaries
In most cases, we will issue you with an incident diary to fill in. These provide important information, which helps us to investigate your complaint and make decisions on the best way to resolve it.
Incident diaries also provide good evidence to support any legal action we take, if they are written at the time of the incident. They will help a judge understand what you have suffered and the impact it has had on you.
The diaries will be required throughout our investigation. If the problem stops and then starts up again we will need one to help prove that our previous warnings have been ignored and demonstrate that we are reasonable in taking further action.
Don’t worry if you are unable to write in a diary (or if you cannot write in English) – we will discuss alternatives with you, such as using a Dictaphone/ tape recorder.
Other Types of Evidence
Incident diaries are not the only source of evidence we use. Anything that backs up your report and helps us to prove someone has caused anti-social behaviour or harassment can be used.
Examples include:-
- Statements from other witnesses – for example, neighbours, visitors, members of the public, Police Officers, Environmental Protection Officers, Housing Officers and Neighbourhood Wardens
- Photographs and video evidence – we will discuss the best methods of obtaining this with you. We have specialist surveillance equipment we can use to record evidence of harassment and anti-social behaviour
- Noise Monitoring Equipment – the Council’s Environmental Protection Service has specialist equipment to help investigate complaints of noise nuisance
- Conviction details – if someone has been found guilty of a criminal offence we can use this as evidence to support our case