Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to help protect victims of targeted anti-social behaviour.

On 27 March, the Government launched the Anti-social Behaviour Action Plan (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/anti-social-behaviour-action-plan) ensuring the police, local authorities and other relevant agencies have the tools and powers they need to tackle anti-social behaviour.

The plan is backed by £160m of funding. This includes up to £60m to fund an increased police and other uniformed presence to clamp down on anti-social behaviour, targeting hotspots. Initially we are working with 10 police force areas, including Durham. From 2024 we will be rolling out this hotspot approach across every police force area in England and Wales. We are also providing up to £50m to support the provision of Immediate Justice, by issuing out of court disposals with conditions to swiftly repair any damage. This has started in 10 initial trailblazer police force areas, including Durham, and will be rolled out nationally in 2024.

As part of the Action Plan, we re-launched the Community Trigger as the ‘Anti-social Behaviour Case Review’, which gives victims of persistent antisocial behaviour the right to request a multi-agency case review where a local threshold is met. The new guidance provides greater clarity on how and when it can be used and encouraging agencies to automatically conduct reviews once the threshold has been hit. We updated the gov.uk pages https://www.gov.uk/guidance/anti-social-behaviour-asb-case-review-also-known-as-the-community-trigger to raise awareness of this tool to give victims and communities a say in the way that complaints of ASB are dealt with.