Anti-Social Behaviour

The term anti-social behaviour (ASB) covers a wide range of unacceptable activity that blights the lives of many people on a daily basis. It often leaves victims feeling helpless, desperate and with a seriously reduced quality of life.

ASB is defined as: "Behaviour by a person which causes or is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same household as the person"

There are three main strands of Anti-Social Behaviour:

• Nuisance - Incidents where an act, condition, thing or person causes trouble, annoyance, inconvenience, offence or suffering to the local community in general rather than to individual victims
• Environmental - Incidents where individuals and groups have an impact on their surroundings including natural, built and social environments
• Personal - Targeted at an individual or group or having an impact on an individual or group rather than the community as a whole

Our role

We are committed to tackling all forms of anti-social behaviour. Our responsibilities are integral to our role as a housing provider, environmental champion and lead partner for the Oxford Community Safety Partnership. we have a legal duty to work in partnership to tackle the city’s crime and disorder priorities.

The responsibility to tackle anti-social behaviour is led by the Anti-Social Behaviour Service, comprised of the Community Response Team and Anti-Social Behaviour Investigation Team.

Reporting anti-social behaviour

If you are at risk of harm call the police on 999.

If you are a tenant of a social housing provider and have a complaint of anti-social behaviour relating to the property that you live in, contact your landlord.

For all other reports of anti-social behaviour, please contact us at saferoxford@oxford.gov.uk.

Policy and Procedures

Download our Anti-social Behaviour and Procedure 2022-25 policy

Download the OSCP Rolling Plan

Anti-Social Behaviour Priorities

Category 1 incidents

Category 1 incidents are cases where there is a serious risk to individuals or the peace of the neighbourhood and which may include violence, serious threats of violence or other criminal activity.

The target time for first response is 3 working days. This allows the officer allocated the case to take the appropriate and necessary steps to risk assess the case and ensure the necessary partner agencies are suitably involved.

Category 2 incidents

These incidents are generally disputes between neighbours, noise issues and the majority of environmental crime.  The target time to response to these incidents is 5 working days.

If you are not satisfied with the outcome of the investigation and you have explored the complaints procedure of the organisation you are not satisfied with you can ask for your case to be reviewed under the Anti-social Behaviour Case Review.

Anti-Social Behaviour Investigation Team

The Anti-Social Behaviour Investigation Team deal with more complex and serious incidents.

All cases are managed in accordance with set guidelines and are aligned with the best practice of the National Incident Recording Standards and the Victims Charter.

We have a central recording system that works through our Safer Oxford email box and is then allocated to the correct service.

We have been trained extensively in the use of new legislation and problem solving using the Goldstein SARA model.