Social landlords making significant improvements in tackling ASB - HouseMark

Social landlords are making significant improvements in tackling anti-social behaviour, according to HouseMark's annual benchmarking report.

The report was launched at HouseMark’s ASB Benchmarking conference and includes data from 180 participating organisations.

The report shows that:

• Case resolution rates rose from 55% in 2007/08 to 66% in 2008/09 - this shows that landlords are getting better at resolving ASB cases.
• NEW MEASURE: Top performing landlords take up to 45 days to resolve ASB cases against a median of 61 days.
• NEW MEASURE: 7.2% of resolved cases involved repeat perpetrators.
• Early intervention by housing management staff resolves just under three quarters of cases. The focus of policymakers should be on supporting housing staff to deal with ASB as it occurs and prevent it from escalating.
• Eviction resolved 1.2% of cases reported in 2008/09. ASBOs resolved just 0.1% of cases.
• Top performing landlords recorded complainant satisfaction levels of over 84% against a median of 74%.

In addition to the figures above, continuing trends from the 2008 report showed that:

• Noise continues to be the most commonly reported type of ASB to landlords.
• A number of intervention and enforcement tools available to landlords are not being widely used. There could be any number of reasons for this – little used powers might be surplus to requirements, not widely known or too complex and difficult to use.
• New cases recorded by landlords are fairly static with a median 10-15 cases per 1,000 properties. There is a considerable rise during the summer holiday period which suggests there is a sound business case for landlords to organise preventative diversionary activities such as play schemes.
• ALMOs recorded a 15% drop in caseloads between 2007/8 and 2008/9, against an overall rise of 2%. This suggests that sustained ALMO responsiveness in this critical service area is paying dividends.

Report author John Wickenden said: “Data collected by HouseMark provides the most up-to-date insight into how well our members deal with anti-social behaviour. As well as looking at caseloads, actions and outcomes, the report shows how ASB affects different sizes and types of landlords.
 
"This is important sectoral information – without it no one would know what type of actions work best, whether ASB is increasing or if tenants were satisfied with the service they receive.

"Across the range of measures there have been steady improvements in satisfaction, case resolution and caseload management. We believe that voluntary benchmarking exercises such as this help to drive up performance through increased transparency, accountability and the sharing of good practice.”

‘ASB Benchmarking Service: analysis of results 2008/09’ will be available to download from HouseMark’s website from July 9.