Noise, crime, and anti-social behaviour

Preventing harm and keeping people housed are the two most important considerations for us when dealing with crime and anti-social behaviour.

You should also remember that, while it is often nothing more than loud music or rowdy parties, noise or other problems coming from your neighbour might be a sign of something more serious like poor mental health, domestic abuse, child or animal neglect, or drug crime.

Even though these things can have an effect on your own life and mental health — try to keep an open mind as to what might be going on.

If you think you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 999.

If you are a woman experiencing violence from someone you live with or a family member, you can contact Women's Aid who can assist you in finding emergency accommodation.

Complaining to the landlord

If the other neighbour also rents, you can make a complaint to their landlord. However, the landlord is not required to take action.

If they are a council or association tenant, there should be a complaints procedure you can follow, so have a look on their website, or get in touch and we can assist you.

If you are not happy with the outcome you can take the case to the Housing Ombudsman Service. You can do this directly or we can help you out.

Community Trigger

A Community Trigger is a processed used by the council to try and sort out problems between residents that are cause by low level crime, or anti-social behaviour.

It consists of meetings between the council officers, police, social landlords, and the NHS. At these meetings they will share information they have, and come up with an action plan for how to resolve the problems.

You can speak to the council about whether this is needed, but it is their decision as to whether the situation meets the criteria for a trigger.

This may result in various action being taken against the problem neighbours, which can be criminal punishment or non-criminal work like visits from the council or social workers.

These can only start if the Council have a record of previous behaviour by the person causing the problem. Because of this, it's important that you make complaints when something happens, so that they have a log of incidents.

Finding new accommodation

One final option (although never an easy one) is to find somewhere else to live and move away from the problem neighbours.

If you are living in social or association housing, you may be able to agree an exchange which enables you to move at a lower cost.