Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) fact sheet

Reporting anti-social behaviour to your landlord is not the same as making a formal complaint about your landlord. Sometimes people refer to both as ‘a complaint’ – but they are different. 

A report of anti-social behaviour is where a resident/s inform their landlord of one of the following: 

• dog fouling, uncontrolled and noisy pets, inconsiderate or dangerous parking and abandoned cars 
• noise nuisance at high levels or unreasonable hours 
• environmental health issues such as rubbish dumping 
• vandalism and graffiti 
• drug misuse, alcohol-related nuisance and prostitution 
• hate incidents motivated by someone’s age, disability, faith, sexual orientation or race 
• harassment, including verbal and physical abuse and threats 
• acts of violence 

The Housing Ombudsman does not investigate anti-social behaviour. The Ombudsman can only consider a complaint about how a landlord responds to reports of anti-social behaviour that were made to it.  

If you are experiencing anti-social behaviour, you should contact your landlord and ask how to report the issue and find out what action it can take. If you are experiencing threats of violence or any other possible criminal activity, you should also report this to the police. 

If a crime has been committed, you can also report it anonymously to Crimestoppers. 

Anti-social behaviour: how to get help - GOV.UK

The Housing Ombudsman defines a complaint as: 

“(…) an expression of dissatisfaction, however, made, about the standard of service, actions or lack of action by the organisation, its own staff, or those acting on its behalf, affecting an individual resident or group of residents”

In the context of anti-social behaviour, a formal complaint is likely to be made after a report of ASB has been made to the landlord and is likely to relate to: 

• the landlord not doing something it should have, such as the level of investigation into the matter 
• the time it took the landlord to investigate or respond to the report made to it 
• the level of action taken in response to the report/s made to it 
• any action it should not have done, or the resident is unhappy with – for example; wrongly accusing a resident of causing anti-social behaviour  

If you report anti-social behaviour to your landlord and you are dissatisfied with how it deals with the situation, you can raise a formal complaint explaining why you do not think its actions were appropriate. 

If the landlord states it will not respond to a complaint about its handling of anti-social behaviour in line with its complaint procedure, you must clearly set out why you are raising a complaint about the landlord itself, and not the anti-social behaviour. 

The Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code states that landlords should respond to formal complaints as follows: 

• acknowledge the complaint within 5 working days of it being received 
• provide a stage 1 response, in writing, within 10 working days of the date the complaint was acknowledged 
• acknowledge a request to escalate the complaint to stage 2 within 5 working days 
• provide a stage 2 response, in writing, within 20 working days of the escalation request being acknowledged 

The Ombudsman can only investigate a complaint once the landlord has provided a stage 2 (final) response. 

All social housing landlords must publish a policy and procedure on how it will deal with reports of anti-social behaviour. 

Landlords have a range of methods for dealing with ASB which can include: 

• offering mediation between parties 
• asking the victim to complete diary sheets 
• drawing up ‘good neighbour agreements’ between the parties concerned 
• formulating an action plan with the relevant parties 
• issuing a warning to the alleged perpetrator 
• installing sound monitoring equipment 

In cases where the anti-social behaviour is more serious, the landlord may decide to: 

• involve other agencies such as the police or environmental health 
• go to court to get the person behaving in an anti-social way evicted, if they are a tenant or leaseholder 
• apply to the court for an injunction 

Landlords will generally only seek to have someone evicted for anti-social behaviour if the behaviour is serious and persistent and all other interventions have failed. To evict an individual, a landlord will also need substantial evidence that it can rely on in court. 

If you are experiencing anti-social behaviour, you can contact your local council and ask an ASB case review (previously known as a Community Trigger Review). This is where your landlord, the council, and the police will review how your case has been handled.  

Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) case review  

A case review must be requested by the person harmed by the behaviour. In most cases, there must have been 3 complaints raised in the previous 6-month period. 

You will be informed of the outcome of the review by letter.   

The Housing Ombudsman cannot consider a complaint from somebody who owns their home, about a resident that lives in social housing.  

Who can bring a complaint to the Housing Ombudsman

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