Anti-social behaviour and crime

We all want to live in safe and happy communities, but we know sometimes situations arise that make this a challenge.

That’s why we have a dedicated community safety team and tenancy services team who work with the community to keep everyone safe.

Effective community safety relies on strong partnership working. As part of our day-to-day approach to managing neighbourhoods and tackling issues on our estates, we work closely with a range of partner organisations to prevent problems, support residents and help create safe, thriving communities.

West Kent collaborates with a range of agencies including:

Local authorities
Kent Police and community safety units
Health and social care providers
Support services and charities
Other housing providers.

Information may be shared with these partners to:

Prevent and address ASB
Safeguard vulnerable individuals
Support enforcement or legal action
Coordinate multi-agency responses.

What is anti-social behaviour?
Anti-social behaviour is when someone acts in a way that causes alarm, harassment or distress to someone who isn’t part of their family or home. To be classed as anti-social, the behaviour must happen more than once, carry on over time and be something that could be stopped.

It’s important to understand that we all make different lifestyle choices, and we sometimes need to accept some behaviour in others, even though we don’t like it.

West Kent defines anti-social behaviour as:
- Violence or threats of violence by tenants, their family or visitors
- Acting in a way that causes, or is likely to cause harassment or distress to other people not of the same household
- Harassment and intimidation including racial, homophobic and hate crime
- Groups of people creating a threatening and intimidating atmosphere
- Illegal drug use
- Noise nuisance
- Graffiti, fly posting, overgrown gardens, animals causing nuisance
- Use of motor vehicles in an anti-social manner on our estates
- Abandoned and untaxed vehicles on our land
- Fly-tipping.
What you can do
Talk to the person causing the problem as they may not know they’re upsetting you. You may be able to sort things out by just talking about it. When you do talk to the person, remember to:
- Be calm and friendly and show you're happy to hear their point of view
- Listen to what they have to say
- Stay in control and don't shout, be abusive or aggressive
- Politely walk away if you feel the person is becoming unreasonable.
If you've tried talking to the person and it's made no difference, please contact us. We'll register your complaint and get a tenancy services officer to investigate the problem.

If your complaint is more serious, for example involving physical assaults, threats of harm, racial or other harassment, we will contact you within 24 working hours, but you should also contact the police.

Remember - if a crime is taking place you should always call the police on 999 right away.
What we will do

If you’ve tried to talk to the person causing the problem, and it hasn’t worked, then do contact us. We’ll get in touch with you and talk through the problems. We'll give you diary sheets because you will need to keep a diary to evidence what is happening. We can't take action without evidence.

We'll talk to you about the action we can take and the action you can take. We'll also speak to the person causing the problem because other people may be affected by their behaviour too. We’ll try to get all the information we can so we can decide with you what action to take.

We do take action against people causing anti-social behaviour in our properties.