ASB Service Standard

We’re committed to providing our tenants with great services and putting them at the heart of everything we do. This service standard outlines the level of service you can expect when reporting anti-social behaviour (ASB) or hate incidents, whether you’re a tenant or a non-tenant making a report about a council tenant or property.

We will:

• Make sure you are listened to, treated fairly and with respect.
  Make sure our staff are professional, trained, and knowledgeable about ASB and hate incidents.
• Provide you with a single point of contact who will manage your case, usually the Housing Patch Manager for your area.
• Make sure our service is accessible and provide different ways for you to report ASB and hate incidents to us.
• Respond to you within the following timescale.
  • raised risk - one working day (including hate-related incidents)
  • standard risk - three working days. 
• Listen to you, complete an impact assessment and agree on an action plan with you.
  • the action plan will be a written document that sets out actions that the Housing Patch Manager will carry out and those we expect you to do. 
• Agree with you on how often we will contact you and your preferred contact method. We will contact you at least monthly to review the action plan.
• Interview the person responsible for the ASB (with your agreement) to allow them to respond to the allegations and discuss support options.
• Be honest and open with you and agree on what we can do.
  Keep you informed about the progress of your case so that you don’t have to chase us
• Discuss how we can support you, whether support is provided by the case officer, a referral, or signposting to an external organisation.
• Work with agencies such as the Police and other Council departments such as Community Protection, Adults Services and Children and Families to tackle ASB.
• Take swift and decisive action to stop ASB and hate incidents using the available tools and powers.
• Arrange for any abusive, obscene or threatening graffiti to be removed within one working day.
• Work jointly with the Council's Community Protection Service where legal enforcement action is required.
• Discuss the case conclusion with you and send you a letter explaining the outcome of your case. 

In turn, we expect you to:

• Report the ASB and hate incidents you are affected by.
• Keep to appointments and tell us if you can no longer make an appointment.
• Work with us to help us achieve a resolution.
• Help us gather evidence, for instance by keeping diary sheets or using the Noise App.
• Be a considerate neighbour and treat others, including our officers and contractors, with respect.
• Let us know if you need any further help or support, so we can respond to you in the best way.
• Be willing to consider mediation where it is appropriate.
• Compete a satisfaction survey to tell us about your views on how we handled your case. 

How do we check we’re meeting these service standards? 

Through our ASB case quality assurance framework, we will review your case at least monthly and carry out case audits to make sure that we are meeting our promises.

We will regularly report how we are doing:

• on our website and social media
• in the tenant newsletter  
• to the Housing Quality Assurance Board (made up of tenants who scrutinise our services)
• to the ASB Service Improvement Group.  

We will review customer feedback from the customer satisfaction survey and service complaints to improve our services. 

When we will review these standards 

• Annually when we review our service plan.
• When we review the ASB policy and procedure.
• When your feedback tells us we need to, for example, through the customer satisfaction survey or complaints about the service.