Community Safety: England

Report Community Safety Issues

If you have any concerns or are feeling affected by anti-social behaviour the information below is designed to help you.

Places for People have produced two guides, Neighbours Matter and Noise Matters which explain more about how neighbourhood issues and complaints are managed and the steps you can take. Always remember to try and resolve problems first by talking to your neighbour in a reasonable and polite way and explain how their behaviour is affecting you.

Often the person is not aware that they are causing a problem and issues can be resolved without the need of external involvement.

Mediation

One option that has proved very successful in resolving an issue with your neighbour is via our mediation service. The service is free to use for customers and is highly recommended as a first step. 

Environmental matters

Places for People will work with the Local Authority to investigate and resolve issues relating to Environmental matters. These include noise nuisance, animal nuisance, fly tipping and rubbish.

If you contact us to report issues where noise is a factor you will normally be asked to complete diary logs for a period of 14 days. This is so we can assess the frequency, length and type of issues you are reporting. 

Please note that one off incidents may not be classed as causing anti-social behaviour but if you want further advice on this then you can contact us via your online account.

Other incidents to report to us

If you wish to log another issue, When you contact us to report an instance of anti-social behaviour we will need to know:

• when and where it happened, as accurately as possible inc dates & times
• what happened
• who was behaving anti-socially
• who else saw or heard the incident
• If the behaviour is criminal as well as anti-social, you must tell the police.

The quickest way to report is via your online account.

If you are unable to access your account online then please call our customer service team.

What we'll do

If the case involves threats of violence, violence, domestic abuse or is a hate crime you'll be contacted by one of our specialist Community Safety Colleagues within 1 working day.

In all other cases you will need to complete our Initial Anti-social Behaviour Report. We will assess this within 5 working days.

You may be asked to complete an incident diary depending on the circumstances of your complaint. These will need to be kept over a 2 week period. 

By keeping a log of issues, it builds up a picture of the frequency and seriousness of the behaviour and this evidence may be used in any court action. Without continuing evidence it will be difficult to investigate your case further.

We will often work in partnership with other agencies to resolve your complaint and may ask you to also report any incidents to the police, environmental health department and the anti-social behaviour officer at your local authority.

Places for People will work in partnership to resolve your issues. Sometimes our partners - especially the police and environmental health departments - are in a better position to take the lead in order to resolve cases effectively.

Useful tips for logging incidents:

• You need to report only the things you’ve seen or heard.
• Other people in your household need to use their own sheet
• Write everything down when it’s fresh in your mind.
• Please write down the full time and date (eg 1pm (or 13:00), 24/11/2015) when the incident started and stopped
• Try to record as much detail as possible – for example, for a noise complaint:
• the type of noise, for example, loud music, drilling, dog barking
• how loud the noise was, such as “I could hear it above my television”, “my windows were rattling”
• how bad it was – “it woke me up”, “I couldn’t fall asleep”, “I couldn’t concentrate on my book”
• If you are verbally abused or threatened, please write the exact words that were said.  If it was by letter, text or email etc please keep these
• If you know who is causing the problem write it down – eg “David Smith”, “their oldest son”, “a visitor called Mike”
• If you call the Police, please record the time, date, the names and badge numbers of any officers who respond, and which station they came from and any reference number they give you.

If a case is opened following your report a specialist Community Safety colleague will contact you to discuss the next steps with you. We'll take the appropriate action to resolve the nuisance if we believe that the conduct constitutes anti-social behaviour.