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Chapter Four: Improving the performance of agencies in tackling antisocial behaviour
4.1 This chapter assesses the extent to which there has been an improvement in the performance of agencies in tackling antisocial behaviour. The chapter examines the effectiveness of the range of interventions that have been put in place to address antisocial behaviour, and discusses the importance of partnership working at local authority and neighbourhood levels to the effectiveness of agency performance. The final section of the chapter presents summary findings from the economic evaluation of twelve antisocial behaviour initiatives operating in the 4 local authorities. A full account of the economic evaluation is provided in Annex 4.
Interventions
4.2 It was apparent that a wide range of interventions, measures and initiatives were being deployed to address antisocial behaviour in each of the 4 case study local authorities, and within the 8 case study neighbourhoods. The research found evidence that agencies were becoming more adept at using the range of available tools to address antisocial behaviour.
4.3 In each of the 4 local authority areas consensus had been achieved about the need for a multi-pronged approach to tackling antisocial behaviour, based on the PIER pillars of prevention, early intervention, enforcement and rehabilitation. Priority was being given to each of these 4 pillars within the antisocial behaviour strategies, demonstrated by the introduction of a range of interventions and initiatives. There was also evidence of an increasing emphasis on providing support for victims and witnesses. The holistic nature of these interventions ensured that agencies and partners did not take a one dimensional approach which focused solely upon enforcement action and the use of legal measures. Neighbourhood level organisations were however often uncertain about how they could contribute to the various pillars of the PIER approach, given the particular historical priorities, practice and skills of individual agencies and organisations. This also reflected the long-standing divide between enforcement-focused and diversionary-focused organisations.
4.4 Although the additional funding from the Scottish Executive was widely welcomed, there were 3 key issues related to the resources provided for antisocial behaviour strategies. This research found evidence that funded initiatives were having a positive impact on antisocial behaviour in local neighbourhoods. However, the time-limited and short-term nature of this funding risked undermining the achievements to date. As an example, residents and front-line agency officers strongly supported the increased visibility of community wardens or additional community police officers. If these additional services were subsequently to be withdrawn, this would have a significantly adverse impact on the relationship between local agencies and residents. Similarly, the short-term nature of the funding of many community diversionary projects - such as those working with young people - made it very difficult for these projects to plan strategically. The funding timeframes did not always adequately build in the period required to recruit and train staff, and also resulted in staff continually worrying about their future employment situation if funding was not to be subsequently renewed. Secondly, whilst improved partnership working and specific initiatives had achieved some improvements and had begun to develop momentum, this success in itself generated additional resource requirements, for example through increasing numbers of calls from residents to agencies about antisocial behaviour. Thirdly, strategic partnerships were increasingly aware of the need for flexibility in resource conditions and deployment. The most obvious example of this was community wardens. The deployment of wardens was linked to the allocation of resources to the worst affected neighbourhoods. However there were increasing attempts to deploy wardens on a more flexible basis across local authority wards, both to facilitate a targeted 'hotspot' approach and to ensure a wider coverage to meet political demands for equity in local service provision between areas. The increasing utilisation of mobile wardens, community policing and environmental response units represented further attempts to enable more responsive targeting and more universal service deployment.
4.5 Concerns were expressed by practitioners operating at both local authority and neighbourhood levels about the effectiveness of existing monitoring data for establishing trends in antisocial behaviour and assessing the impacts of intervention in the short, medium and longer terms. This research has highlighted the inherent difficulties of evaluating strategies at an early stage of implementation, for example interpreting rising levels of reported antisocial behaviour incidents (see Chapter 5). Thus, while there is a considerable evidence base on changes in agency working practices, it is more difficult to establish the impacts of these changes within neighbourhoods. The research has also highlighted the gap between improved agency performance and perceptions of antisocial behaviour and agency performance amongst local residents - which is partly a function of the relatively short time in which the new strategies have been in place. But as Chapters 5 and 6 will illustrate, even where there is evidence of an improvement in neighbourhood circumstances through the additional deployment of community wardens and police officers, this increased service delivery does not necessarily result in changes in residents' perceptions of anti-social behaviour or agency performance. It was noticeable that this was also the case in the Broomhouse neighbourhood in Edinburgh, which had the most extensive targeted additional antisocial behaviour interventions of the 8 study neighbourhoods. Finally, there is a more fundamental issue about how the 'success' of antisocial behaviour strategies is determined or measured. There was a common view amongst practitioners, and acknowledged by the Scottish Executive, that the mere deployment of ASBOs or other mechanisms in local neighbourhoods is not in itself a measure of effectiveness; not least because of the difficulties in implementing these measures that were identified by residents as identified in the following chapter. It is also the case that the evaluation of antisocial behaviour strategies needs to be placed in the context of wider and deeper-rooted social processes. This is illustrated most clearly in the considerable challenges facing local agencies in tackling the chronic levels of under-reporting in the case study neighbourhoods discussed in Chapter 6.
4.6 The deployment of environmental hit squads and the environmental interventions of community wardens and concierges have had an important and positive impact on antisocial behaviour in the case study neighbourhoods. The fact that litter, graffiti and rubbish are removed rapidly, and that racist and sectarian graffiti is usually removed with 24 hours, maintains the aesthetic appearance of the neighbourhoods; demonstrates the commitment and capacity of local agencies, and contributes to generating a sense of pride and ownership amongst residents. These activities have been supplemented by major clean up operations of public spaces and the enhanced maintenance of gardens. In addition to this reactive response, a range of proactive measures had been undertaken, including improved lighting and the installation of fences. Some properties had also benefited from Secure by Design improvements. The use of CCTV had provided reassurance to residents, enabled evidence to be gathered against perpetrators and resulted in quantifiable reductions in antisocial behaviour in the public spaces where it has been deployed. Given the prevalence of noise complaints, improved insulation of properties has been identified as a key priority for housing renewal, although there are resource implications in rehabilitating existing properties and there is also an economic and cultural problem with the lack of carpets and increasing use of (often poor quality) laminate flooring in tenement and flat properties.
4.7 While community wardens in selected local authorities have been subject to a separate evaluation by the Scottish Executive (Scottish Executive (2007) National Evaluation of Scotland's Community Wardens, Edinburgh: Scottish Executive), an economic evaluation of the community warden schemes in our 4 study local authorities is presented below and in Annex 4. Our research found that community wardens appeared to have been relatively effective in the case study neighbourhoods and were visible to the majority of residents. The impact of wardens was threefold. Firstly, their presence helped to reduce antisocial behaviour by deterring potential perpetrators, reporting incidents and acting as professional witnesses. Secondly, they acted as a conduit for community intelligence, including informing other agencies about complaints from residents or visible signs of antisocial behaviour such as vandalism and graffiti, enabling swift and appropriate action to be taken. Thirdly, they had a community development and reassurance role that increased residents' sense of empowerment and engagement with local agencies and thereby may lead to a reduction in antisocial behaviour in the longer term. A key element of wardens' effectiveness was the clear distinction between their role and that of the police. This enabled both local police officers and wardens to focus on different elements of community safety, with wardens often concentrating on environmental concerns, engaging in community development activities with local organisations and interacting with groups, including young people, who were often more disengaged from the police. These distinctive roles also facilitated more co-ordinated and holistic neighbourhood interventions whereby both joint working and individual agency interventions were carefully planned. The effectiveness of wardens was also enhanced by their specific roles and responsibilities being clearly articulated to local residents. It should be noted however that after an initial impact, wardens appeared to become less visible to residents and it was uncertain to what extent they have managed to engage with individuals actually involved in antisocial behaviour, including young people. Community concierges played a similar role as community wardens, although concierges were not present in all the neighbourhoods and were allocated to particular blocks of properties. Concierges were very positively perceived by other local agency officers and residents alike, and their reassurance and environmental maintenance roles were regarded as particularly effective in combating antisocial behaviour.
4.8 Additional and more visible policing was identified, along with the increased deployment of CCTV, as the main priorities for local residents in the case study neighbourhoods. Frustration with police response times was an issue in all the neighbourhoods. Most of the case study neighbourhoods had experienced an actual increase in the levels of police officers and patrols, resulting from changing officer deployment patterns and police operational decisions aimed at increasing the visibility of patrols in local neighbourhoods (and in some cases through the funding of additional 'overtime' neighbourhood patrol officers by local authorities). Whilst this provided reassurance to residents in the short term, it was evident from the resident survey and interviews with agency officers that there was a risk that the demand for an increasing police presence would be insatiable, and that additional patrols very quickly became the normalised minimum expectation of residents. Clearly there are resource limitations to the deployment of more police officers. However, at local authority and neighbourhood levels, there was increasing flexibility and mobility in targeting officers to where they were most required. It also appeared to be the case that the continuity of existing officers and the building of trust between known officers and local residents were almost as important as actual police numbers.
4.9 It was apparent that, along with providing greater support to victims and witnesses, diversionary activities and early intervention were an increasing priority for both local authority and neighbourhood level antisocial behaviour strategies. One approach involved the establishment of new initiatives, particularly those working with young people and securing funding for new youth or community development workers posts. Many of these workers were perceived positively by local agency officers, although their work was often at an early stage and there were concerns about longer term funding security. A second approach was to bring existing youth projects and activities more firmly within antisocial behaviour partnerships. There were limitations to this approach arising from the different role and perception of youth workers amongst young people. For example the fact that local youth organisations were seen to be separate from enforcement agencies was regarded by youth workers and young people themselves as building trust and ensuring the participation of young people. Even allowing for this however, it did appear that more linkages between youth activities and antisocial behaviour partnerships could be made. This report has identified the fragility of some community relations in the case study neighbourhoods (see Chapter 3, paragraphs 3.10- 3.19). One important initiative in Abbeyview in Fife was the community festival which several thousand people now attend and which was reported to have had very positive impacts on community spirit and the relationship between residents and local agencies. Although each of the local authorities or partner organisations provided a range of mediation and counselling services, awareness of these services were limited amongst both local agency officers and residents, perhaps reflecting the weak role that social service departments appeared to play in neighbourhood antisocial behaviour partnership networks (with the exception of the Scottish Borders).
4.10 There were at least 3 initiatives in place in the 8 case study neighbourhoods that were aimed at addressing underage drinking, and all 3 were reported to have been effective. In the Scottish Borders and in Abbeyview in Fife, partnerships were in place between local agencies, retailers and young people to reduce the supply of alcohol to underage drinkers. In Abbeyview the Bluelight initiative had local community volunteers staging a monthly disco for up to 450 young people: attendees had to be breathalysed as condition of entry.
4.11 A range of enforcement measures had been utilised in the case study neighbourhoods. These included ASBOs, bail conditions, and Acceptable Behaviour Contracts and housing management interventions including Scottish Short Secure Tenancies and eviction. Agency officers believed that these measures were appropriate and had in some cases been effective both in resolving the specific antisocial behaviour and in demonstrating to local residents the capacity and willingness of agencies to take action (most notably the eviction of drug dealers). However, there were concerns that the length of the legal processes undermined community confidence. The gathering of evidence was also extremely labour intensive and was often hampered by the reluctance of residents to give formal statements. There were also concerns that ASBOs were subject to frequent breaches. One interesting finding was the increasingly effective use of bail conditions by local agencies to limit the movement and conduct of alleged perpetrators. Although these enforcement measures were strongly supported by local residents, there was confusion about how they operated and doubts about their effectiveness (see the following chapters). The research found a willingness and growing expertise amongst agency officers to use enforcement measures and increasing attempts to link enforcement action to the provision of support and diversionary interventions to individuals, including within housing management practice. This reflected a wider movement towards building a range of complementary measures around the use of enforcement. At the local authority level, more proactive links had been made between Councils, the police and the Procurator Fiscal, although there were still some tensions with the courts, despite enhanced interaction. These included disputed interpretations over the levels of evidence requiring to be presented in ASBO or eviction applications, the number of incidents that constituted persistent antisocial behaviour, and the role of professional witnesses in providing collaborating evidence. In some cases, the Courts were frustrated by the extent and quality of evidence presented to them. Some local authority practitioners were concerned that the wellbeing of local communities and the likelihood of continuing antisocial behaviour were not given enough weight in court decisions, when compared to the welfare or needs of perpetrators. A key issue, for both courts and local authority Housing Departments, was the alternative accommodation likely to be required by households, particularly those with children, in eviction cases. The enhanced linkages between local authority antisocial behaviour, housing allocation and homelessness strategies should help to address this problem.
4.12 The ability of local neighbourhood agencies and residents to call upon the services of centralised noise nuisance and antisocial behaviour investigation units was regarded as a vital element of effective local antisocial behaviour interventions. There were 3 further issues arising about the use of enforcement measures. There was a growing demand amongst local agencies to utilise centrally-provided services, for example Antisocial Behaviour Teams or intensive family support projects. Whilst these services offer effective and appropriate interventions, their capacity to meet rising local demand is limited. Secondly, there is an issue about the extent of knowledge and ownership that local agency staff have about the use of enforcement measures such as ASBOs which are usually progressed by centralised local authority teams. Finally, many local agency officers detected a shift within local communities away from a rising demand for more ASBOs towards a more critical reflection about whether existing ASBOs were being enforced and whether they were effective in changing the behaviour of the individuals subject to them.
4.13 The research identified that the key mechanisms driving successful interventions were significant additional resources combined by the commitment and capacity of local managers. For example, the neighbourhood which appeared to have achieved the most significant improvements was Broomhouse in Edinburgh. This neighbourhood had benefited from the widely perceived effectiveness of key officers and its location as a site for a number of pilot interventions, including a neighbourhood concierge scheme, a youth inclusion worker, the establishment of a Neighbourhood Support Team, a case management and early intervention project, and a police Safer Communities Unit. Each of these pilots had been apparently successful in its own terms, but it was the cumulative effect of this level of intervention, allied to their efficient co-ordination, which had achieved such significant improvements. It was therefore the clear targeting of substantial resources in a relatively small defined area that had facilitated such an impact. Without belittling the achievements of individual and collective agency performance, there is clearly a resource implication in attempting to replicate this scale of intervention in other neighbourhoods. Indeed, Broomhouse, in common with other localities, now faces the challenge of sustaining this level of activity and investment. Similarly, the Safer Neighbourhoods Operations Team intervention in Methil included increased police patrols, community capacity building, work with the local school and the identification of individuals who were then subject to a mixture of enforcement and diversionary interventions. This resulted in significant short term-improvements in levels of antisocial behaviour, but these had proved more difficult to sustain once the period of intensive intervention ended.
Partnership Working
4.14 Considerable efforts had been made to ensure the participation of a wide range of stakeholder agencies in local authority antisocial behaviour strategies, and this had resulted in more proactive and co-ordinated roles for the police, the Procurator Fiscal and the Children's Hearing system in developing and delivering antisocial behaviour strategies than was previously the case. The fact that the strategies had achieved significant 'buy-in' from key agencies had increased the scope for multi-agency co-ordination, knowledge of agencies' respective resources, policies and working practices and information-sharing. This facilitated a more effective multi-agency response to antisocial behaviour. However, there were considerable implementation challenges in ensuring synergies between the various individual agencies and multi-agency strategies and partnerships. It had also proved challenging to develop institutional structures and processes for co-ordinating responses to antisocial behaviour between agencies with differing working practices, cultures and priorities. There were also difficulties in achieving consistency between the policies and practices of central local authority antisocial behaviour teams and the different approaches being taken by local teams of practitioners in individual neighbourhoods.
4.15 The establishment of more specialised, centralised and multi-agency antisocial behaviour teams and units at the local authority level had increased the potential for co-operation and ensured the development of, and access to, knowledge and expertise. The additional Scottish Executive funding had also been important in facilitating partnership working and strategic engagement and in enabling local neighbourhood initiatives to be put in place.
4.16 Despite the improvements in partnership working, the research found a need to develop the further proactive involvement of some key stakeholders, most notably education and social work departments, social and private landlords, businesses and also local communities. For some potential partner agencies, the issue was one of their previous non-engagement in local antisocial behaviour strategies. For example, private landlords or local shopkeepers did not always identify a role for themselves within local interventions, and were sometimes reluctant to accept responsibility within local initiatives. The bottle marking schemes to reduce underage drinking, where bottles of alcohol are individually stamped in order to identify where they have been sold from, provide an illustration of both the importance of involving local retailers in reducing some forms of antisocial behaviour and of the considerable effort and time required to persuade them to participate in such schemes. Similarly, local schools had not traditionally been explicitly involved in local antisocial behaviour initiatives, although we found evidence that through mechanisms such as Acceptable Behaviour Contracts, anti-truancy and littering campaigns and police officer and community warden school liaison activities, local educational establishments were becoming more embedded in neighbourhood antisocial behaviour strategies. Although social landlords were usually proactively engaged in neighbourhood level partnership working to tackle antisocial behaviour, tensions arose with local authorities over the geographical boundaries of social landlords' areas of operation, the allocation of housing to households with a history of antisocial behaviour, and the consequences for local authority homelessness obligations of evicting households for antisocial behaviour. There was still evidence of a long standing fault line between housing practitioners who prioritised the needs of neighbours and wider local communities, and social work officers who have welfare obligations to individuals and households engaged in antisocial behaviour. More holistic PIER approaches to individual cases were helping to overcome this divide, but there remained problems about the lack of social work engagement in the earlier stages of cases and the limited use that was being made of perpetrator support services. As discussed in Chapter 6, despite extensive efforts by local agencies, the engagement of residents in neighbourhood-level antisocial behaviour strategies remains fragile, in terms of collective involvement in strategic planning and operational decision-making, and through the reporting of incidents of antisocial behaviour.
4.17 The development and implementation of antisocial behaviour strategies at both local authority and neighbourhood level had been adversely affected by relatively high levels of staff turnover. This ranged from senior strategic managers to front line housing staff and community police officers. This turnover resulted in new relationships having to be forged, additional training having to be provided, and the loss of local knowledge and expertise. This high turnover was very important because both residents and front line agency staff in the case study neighbourhoods argued that consistency of staffing was a key element in building trust. The high staff turnover, combined with a plethora of new initiatives and structural re-organisation and the linked issue of the short-term funding of some interventions, generated a context of transition and ambiguity about where responsibilities and resources were located which affected strategic and front line agency officers and residents alike. Although this problem affected some local authorities and neighbourhoods more than others, the research found a strong desire for the consolidation of organisational structures, legislation and funding sources and consistency in policies and practices to enable antisocial behaviour strategies to bed in and develop.
4.18 The research found evidence that the quality of information about antisocial behaviour being pooled between agencies was improving. Previous barriers, including a lack of trust, fears of breaching Data Protection legislation, the limited autonomy given to neighbourhood officers to share details of cases, and the absence of mechanisms for information exchange, had been resolved. The subsequent utilisation of this information was increasing the ability of agencies at local authority and neighbourhood levels to identify localised trends in antisocial behaviour, to co-ordinate rapid and flexible operational responses, and to begin to track the impact of local interventions down to the level of individual households. For example, innovative use was being made of pooled police command and control data, CCTV footage and housing management records to co-ordinate activities on a weekly basis in some neighbourhoods. This case management approach to individuals and households was increasingly resulting in more tailored holistic interventions where enforcement actions were complemented by referral to support services which was facilitated by a greater knowledge of what each agency could contribute. There were still however some difficulties arising from the compatibility of electronic databases, and from differing definitions and categorisations of antisocial behaviour. Technical problems with the interface between different software packages and IT systems or the differential labelling and coding of cases could prevent the electronic exchange, cross-referencing or tracking of particular incidents or individuals. Secondly, different agencies classified different forms of offences or incidents as antisocial behaviour, or bundled types of antisocial behaviour into collective categories together differentially, which made information exchange and comparability more problematic. Finally, there was no consistent practice about when an incident of, or complaint about, antisocial behaviour was officially recorded and the extent of information gathered about the alleged perpetrator and complainant (for example ethnicity).
4.19 There was clear evidence of a willingness to engage in partnership working at a neighbourhood level. As one agency officer in Fife explained: "You can't deal with the problems in isolation, it's about trying to find out who can do what, getting people round the table more, adopting a case management approach as a way to deal with issues… you've got to look at the bigger picture and deal with things a bit differently." There was evidence of strong partnership working between local police and housing officers, and this extended in some neighbourhoods to joint visits to perpetrators and neighbours. In most of the neighbourhoods regular formal meetings between housing and police officers were complemented by frequent informal communication. There remained some frustration amongst local police officers that other agencies did not seek to proactively access all the police data that could be made available, in particular relating to individual incidents or households or very local geographies and trends of antisocial behaviour. The police believed that other local agencies would want this data, but were either unaware that the police had this information or that the police would be willing and able to share it with them. The ability of local partnerships to link housing enforcement mechanisms to other interventions was regarded as an effective tool in all the study areas. After initial difficulties, it appeared that community wardens were robustly integrated into partnership working with local police and housing officers. Community wardens and concierges appeared to have a particularly important linking function between residents, local agencies and centralised antisocial behaviour response teams. One clear area of improved partnership working was the greater co-ordination of environmental services within antisocial behaviour interventions at both local authority and neighbourhood levels. Police officers and community wardens were also increasingly liaising with local schools and youth projects, although some community youth projects in the case study neighbourhoods appeared to remain more peripheral to the main local partnership working arrangements. This reflected a wider finding that the majority of partnership working at the neighbourhood level to date had focused on serious antisocial behaviour and enforcement interventions, rather than on diversionary or early intervention measures. There was however a clear recognition in all of the case study neighbourhoods that diversion was a key priority and early intervention and support was also becoming an increasing focus of housing management practice. It was further acknowledged that improved agency partnership working would not necessarily be apparent to local residents, a view borne out by our household survey findings. Although attempts were being made to streamline and consolidate contact points for residents, for example through one central telephone number, residents were often confused about recent changes and who they should contact.
4.20 A key element of partnership working is the engagement of agencies with local communities. It was widely acknowledged that this was one aspect of antisocial behaviour strategies that needed further development. On an individual level, providing support to victims and witnesses and increasing reporting rates was a priority in all the neighbourhoods, and some agency officers perceived some improvement in the willingness of residents to engage with local agencies and to report incidents. Key measures for achieving this included the police establishing drop-in surgeries, utilising councillors as third party conduits of complaints, and the police arranging to visit complainants in their workplace or other venue rather than their own homes. However, many local residents groups continued to have a precarious existence, and whilst action would often coalesce around particular escalations in antisocial behaviour, it proved more difficult to sustain some residents groups in the longer- term. In part this was a reflection of some of the community dynamics described in Chapter 6 which mitigated developing a 'neighbourhood wide' consensus. Similarly, despite the considerable efforts of local agencies to inform residents about new initiatives and legal powers (through leaflets, newsletters, public meetings and road shows) there continued to be a great deal of confusion within local communities about the new powers that local agencies had, the actions that agencies would be willing and able to take, what interventions were operating in their neighbourhood, what constituted an 'appropriate' complaint, and to which agency different types of antisocial behaviour should be reported. There were examples of successful efforts to engage with residents and involve them in the development of local strategies, most notably in Broomhouse in Edinburgh, and through some youth events. In Whinhall, housing officers had undertaken a neighbourhood drive around with members of a new residents group to identify antisocial behaviour hotspots in the neighbourhood and a number of the neighbourhoods had been surveyed during the development of antisocial behaviour strategies.
The Local Authority- Neighbourhood Interface
4.21 A key issue for this research was the extent to which multi-agency antisocial behaviour strategies being developed at the local authority level were being rolled out to influence agency delivery at the local neighbourhood level. A number of important findings emerged. The first was that the changes that local authority antisocial behaviour strategies had made to agency partnerships, processes and working practices at the neighbourhood level were relatively limited. There was awareness amongst neighbourhood level officers that there was enhanced joint working at strategic levels, that more resources and specific initiatives were being deployed in neighbourhoods, and that new targets and performance indicators may refocus activities at the local level. Many neighbourhood officers did not however appear to be aware of the finer details of the antisocial behaviour strategy, and several commented that these strategies had not fundamentally changed working practices. This is not an entirely negative finding. Rather it reflects the fact that in many neighbourhoods, moves towards enhanced partnership working predate current strategies, for example through the framework of the Better Neighbourhood Services Fund. In addition, front line officers were largely supportive of the general principles of the new strategies, and in particular the emphasis on a holistic PIER approach. It was also evident that front line officers felt increasingly supported in sharing information and working more closely with other local agencies.
4.22 However, a number of challenges were evident. The most prominent of these was the level of confusion about roles and responsibilities resulting from new funding regimes and institutional re-organisation both within and across service providers. Many officers referred to the difficult context of a rapidly and constantly changing organisational framework, and were uncertain where their own teams or organisations fitted in to these new delivery arrangements. The second important issue was the balance to be struck between ensuring consistency across local authority areas, and between agencies and enabling the autonomy and flexibility for neighbourhood officers to define local problems and to develop area-based interventions. The concentration of expertise and knowledge within strategic partnerships and dedicated central antisocial behaviour units was broadly welcomed and these were seen as a vital resource for local agencies to draw upon to deal with the most complex and serious cases of antisocial behaviour. However, many officers were concerned that there was a risk that front line staff could become disempowered and lose ownership of local problems. In one stark example, front line housing officers in a case study neighbourhood were unaware of the numbers of Short Scottish Secure Tenancies, ASBOs and ABCs in their area as these were processed centrally. There was also considerable concern about how funding to individual neighbourhoods was joined up and distributed at a local authority level. Local agency officers were anxious that the wider social and economic forces impacting upon antisocial behaviour in their neighbourhoods continued to be addressed at local authority, and indeed national, levels. Allied to this, it was evident from the research that where neighbourhoods had achieved significant improvements, this was partly down to the allocation of additional resources, including the ability of key local stakeholders to access increased financial support from local authority targeting, partly through acting as the localities for pilot initiatives, and partly through being able to draw upon 'in kind' skills and services from local agencies and voluntary organisations. Successful interventions at the neighbourhood level were largely brought about by the dynamics arising from groups of individuals who were committed to developing effective partnership working arrangements. In some, but not all cases, this was reported by local agency officers to have resulted in a displacement of problems to other neighbourhoods. A central challenge therefore remains ensuring that the gains of some neighbourhoods do not come at the expense of others. Conversely, there was some frustration in the worst affected neighbourhoods, including our case studies, about some resources being deflected to other areas for 'political' reasons.
Other Factors Influencing Changes in Antisocial Behaviour
4.23 Local agency officers highlighted that whilst some of the improvements within the case study neighbourhoods were directly related to improved agency performance and the use of a range of interventions, there were other causal factors that needed to be acknowledged. As one community police officer described: "I would like to say that the improvements here are due to us sweeping the streets clean, but this is not the case." One of these other factors is population change. In some neighbourhoods, the groups of individuals who had been involved in gang fighting had 'moved away or grown up' in the words of one agency officer and they had not been replaced by a 'new generation' who may become engaged in serious public disturbances. It was also reported that in some neighbourhoods, a number of vulnerable or problematic families had moved out of the area, either voluntarily or through eviction and had been replaced by new residents who were not engaging in antisocial behaviour. This highlights that the work within neighbourhoods is influenced by wider housing processes and therefore some of the improvements are susceptible to further population changes. These include generational effects amongst existing residents (for example young people 'progressing' to more serious antisocial behaviour as they become older teenagers) or shifts in allocation processes that result in households with multiple and complex needs moving into the neighbourhood. It was also recognised that the inter-generational effects of poverty and unemployment, and cultural attitudes towards alcohol or co-operating with official authority agencies were not issues that could be resolved in isolation at the neighbourhood level.
Economic Evaluation
4.24 The economic evaluation of 12 initiatives across the 4 local authorities sought to determine whether the resources deployed to deliver a sample of anti-social behaviour initiatives represented good value for money. This sample included the community wardens schemes and mediation services operating in each of the 4 local authorities. In addition, the Early Intervention Families project in Edinburgh, the Safer Neighbourhoods Team in Fife, the Night Noise Team in North Lanarkshire and the Freephone Antisocial Behaviour Helpline in the Scottish Borders were also evaluated. Some of these initiatives operated across their local authority areas whilst others were introduced into specific localities, although these local areas were not necessarily our 8 case study neighbourhoods. A fuller account of the economic evaluation methodology and findings is presented in Annex 4.
4.25 Conventional approaches to economic evaluation, which try to combine the costs and benefits into a single measure, are not suitable for initiatives with multiple outcomes and benefits. Instead, we utilised a form of cost consequences analysis which identifies all of the relevant costs (which reflect the resources used) and the consequences associated with a particular intervention. For each initiative we sought to:
- Analyse activity and outcomes data to identify quantitative and qualitative outcomes
- Identify resource use and associated costs
- Identify short-term cost savings (primarily to the Exchequer, but also to individuals) and other benefits, plus any additional costs incurred due to the initiative
- Identify potential long-term cost savings
The full costs of providing each service initiative (which included time spent on activities such as training, management, administration and supervision) were included in the unit costs, not just the salary-related cost of the time spent directly working with clients or on specific service-related activities.
4.26 Each of the community warden services had similar overall objectives - reducing crime and the fear of crime, reducing antisocial behaviour, and making neighbourhoods more pleasant places to live. However each scheme worked in ways that reflected locally-identified needs and other local service provision. Each of the 4 community warden services reported its outcomes in different ways, and each local authority identified different sets of statistical indicators to measure progress and compare with baseline values. Because of this it was not possible to identify comparable unit costs for similar activities. It was also difficult to determine whether rising reports of crime and antisocial behaviour should be interpreted as a positive or negative outcome of the warden schemes. We found that the community wardens were engaged in a significant amount of community development work which is very hard to quantify, and to value in financial terms. One approach to determining the cost-effectiveness of wardens is to consider their financial impact on other services. For example wardens may generate additional work for other services - e.g. by reporting environmental problems that would otherwise have been ignored. However, wardens may also lead to a quicker response from other services to some problems, thus preventing an escalation, e.g. reporting damage to unoccupied property or new graffiti. Some work (like litter picking) may also be diverted to the wardens from other services. If criminal activity has reduced, estimated values for the social and economic costs of various crimes can be used to demonstrate the impact on publicly-funded services (such as the criminal justice system and the NHS) and on the personal costs borne by those affected ( e.g. due to physical and emotional impacts). Research undertaken in England suggests there is an overall saving of about £2,000 in social and economic costs per crime prevented (Neighbourhood Renewal Unit (2004) Research Report 8 Neighbourhood Wardens Scheme Evaluation. London: Neighbourhood Renewal Unit, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister). Overall, our evidence suggests that community wardens probably reduce public costs by more than their own implementation and operational costs. They also had a positive impact on more intangible issues, such as ensuring more environmentally attractive neighbourhoods, providing public reassurance and encouraging greater community involvement in antisocial behaviour interventions and other neighbourhood development activities.
4.27 Two of the 4 mediation services initiatives were provided in-house by the local authorities and the other 2 were provided, through Service Level Agreements, by SACRO-a voluntary organisation specialising in conflict resolution. All 4 mediation projects delivered their services using a combination of trained volunteers and a core team of paid staff. A financial value therefore needs to be placed on this volunteer time to reflect their contribution to delivering the service. Although there was no overall consistency in recording activity, the work of each mediation service can generally be sub-divided into 2 broad elements - 'assessments' (which include providing advice, guidance and assistance) and 'cases' (where the parties meet or use shuttle mediation to try to identify a mutually acceptable resolution to their dispute). The information provided by SACRO showed that the average cost of an assessment (including the value of volunteer time) was about £40 for the provision of basic information, £80-£90 if advice and support were provided by telephone, and around £600 for a home visit. The cost of an assessment provided by one of the local authority in-house services was estimated as £35-£145. The other local authority in-house service did not distinguish between assessments and cases; its average cost per referral was £635-£815. For the 3 services where the average cost per case could be calculated, this was £1,200-£1,500. It is not possible to link inputs to outcomes for these mediation services. Some people contacting the service are able to reach an acceptable resolution using the advice they have been given, whereas in some situations it may not be possible for the parties to agree, even after extensive meetings and discussion. This is partly because some service users are more willing than others to agree a compromise. A 'successful outcome' is therefore highly subjective. The specific benefits of resolving community disputes are also hard to quantify, though these are likely to include reduced stress levels (which may affect health status and service use) and more socially cohesive communities and neighbourhoods. Mediation services can also build community capacity in conflict resolution ( e.g. through work in schools), which should also help to reduce future levels of neighbour disputes and antisocial behaviour.
4.28 A Freephone Antisocial Behaviour Helpline has been introduced by Scottish Borders Council in order that local residents can contact the Council's Anti-Social Behaviour Unit ( ASBU) free of charge. The ASBU either helps directly with their query, or directs callers to the appropriate service. The average cost per call was about £4, although this would increase to almost £12 if the remaining budget is spent on further advertising: the telephone number has already been extensively publicised. The impact of the freephone helpline on the number of calls made to the Council relating to antisocial behaviour is not known, although the service should potentially improve the equity of access to antisocial behaviour services for those living in rural areas of the local authority area and for residents in settlements without community wardens.
4.29 The Early Intervention Families Project works with vulnerable families in Edinburgh where the behaviour of one or more children aged 12 or under is giving cause for concern. Families are allocated to a Case Manager, who works holistically with them - and with all of the other agencies in contact with the family - to co-ordinate these services and to identify and fill any gaps in service provision/response. One of the aims of the project is to improve the client family's ability to function as a family, which should reduce the subsequent development of antisocial behaviour. The average cost per closed case, assuming an average contact period with the project of 9-12 months, will be about £10,000- £14,000 per family (when full overhead costs are included after mainstreaming). Although it was not possible to determine the particular costs to service providers that would have been incurred by these families in the absence of the intervention, these are estimated to be in the region of £330,000 a year for a family with 4 children if some of the children require foster and/or residential care and costs associated with criminal justice services are included (Nixon, J., Hunter, C., Parr, S., Whittle, S., Myers, S. and Sanderson, D. (2006) Anti-social Behaviour Intensive Family Support Projects: An evaluation of six pioneering projects. London: Department for Communities and Local Government). Early interventions with families experiencing problems can also reduce the risks of longer-term social exclusion and poor educational attainment, which have considerable cost consequences for society and for the family members themselves. This project is therefore very cost-effective.
4.30 The Safer Neighbourhoods Team operated by Fife Council comprises a Co-ordination Team drawn from a range of local organisations and an Operations Team of police officers. The 2 teams utilise local intelligence to target specific hotspots for crime and antisocial behaviour, and then work within these areas to identify the main local concerns, to identify appropriate interventions, and to co-ordinate the interventions delivered by a range of local agencies. The Safer Neighbourhoods Team is designed to be an integral part of local multi-agency working, and it was not therefore possible to isolate its specific costs and benefits. However, the available evidence suggests that the overall approach of the Team delivered considerable benefits, in terms of reducing incidences of public disturbance and repeat offences, especially those involving young people. It therefore will have reduced some of the public and private costs of antisocial behaviour, although we cannot determine the exact extent of these savings or link them to the particular costs to provide this service.
4.31 The Night Noise Team operated by North Lanarkshire Council service uses a team of Environmental Health Officers ( EHOs) to respond to residents' complaints about night-time domestic noise. The team works very closely with the police. The average cost per call was slightly over £600. Although the benefits to local residents of reducing night noise are considerable ( e.g. improved sleep and better daytime functioning; fewer disputes with neighbours), these are hard to quantify. Despite considerable expenditure on promoting the service, calls have been much lower than anticipated. It was not clear if night noise is less of a problem in North Lanarkshire than initially thought, or if the team has a strong deterrent effect. The unit cost of the service could be reduced by using trained Noise Officers rather than EHOs and/or by extending the team's responsibilities to include night noise from commercial premises.
4.32 Our economic evaluation has raised a number of methodological challenges which need to be considered when undertaking future research on the cost benefits of antisocial behaviour initiatives. Firstly, chosen outcome measures need to be clear and unambiguously linked to the initiative under consideration. Appropriate comparators are also required, along with information on recent trends. For example, if car crime has been falling in an area for some time ( e.g. due to other local initiatives), a subsequent reduction may be a continuation of this trend rather than a specific impact of the new intervention under consideration. Comparisons are facilitated if clear units of outcome can be defined and measured, as unit costs can then be determined. It is also the case that where similar projects with similar objectives use different measures for activity and outcomes (for example the mediation services in this evaluation), meaningful comparisons cannot be made and lessons cannot be learned from experiences elsewhere.
4.33 Secondly, the costs of service provision need to be measured consistently. The costs associated with some of the initiatives considered in this evaluation were included as part of a wider budget heading ( e.g. the costs of in-house mediation services were included in the budget for the antisocial behaviour team), making it hard to identify the specific cost of delivering the service. The value of any payments in kind ( e.g. seconded staff) or volunteer input needs to be included to ensure that all of the resources used are considered. It is also important to include organisational overheads - these are generally included for services provided through a Service Level Agreement, but may be overlooked when a service is provided in-house. This can make externally-provided services seem uncompetitive in terms of price. Given that expenditure patterns tend to vary over a year, costs should ideally be available for at least one full financial year to ensure that all of the relevant costs are captured, rather than relying on quarterly expenditure snapshots. Additionally, staff time spent on training, supervision and the management of service delivery should be included in evaluations. It is also important for funders and delivery agencies to capture both the quantitative and the qualitative benefits of interventions. For many projects, the most effective means of identifying quantitative benefits is through estimating the reduction in expenditure by publicly-funded services (and, possibly, by individuals) due to the impact of the initiative. The early intervention families project in Edinburgh illustrates how considerable short-term expenditure would have been much higher in the absence of the intervention. These savings are likely to apply to the agencies directly funding the intervention and also to a range of other agencies and organisations who benefit from reductions in antisocial behaviour. Where longer-term benefits are forecast, these should also be identified and included as qualitative benefits, even if specific financial consequences are difficult to estimate. Many less tangible positive outcomes cannot easily be quantified, but it is important that these are recognised and stated so that they may be considered in local decision making about the deployment of specific interventions. Finally, the relatively short time scale of this evaluation has been problematic. Some projects may take up to 18 months to become established and to start to realise their true potential. There is a risk therefore that premature, short-term evaluation may result in projects likely to be cost effective in the medium to long term being discontinued.
4.34 Unfortunately, it was generally not possible to attribute specific costs and benefits (expressed solely in monetary terms) to the 12 antisocial behaviour initiatives evaluated in this study. This is partly due to the methodological issues outlined above, but also because many of the initiatives require close co-operation and multi-agency working to be effective, for example the community wardens schemes and Fife's Safer Neighbourhoods Team. If meaningful comparisons are to be made of the delivery of a specific service across different areas ( e.g. mediation services), it is vital that costs, activity and outcomes are measured consistently. For many initiatives, the most appropriate way to quantify some of the associated benefits is to estimate the expenditure which might otherwise have been incurred in the absence of the initiative. This should consider expenditure by publicly-funded services and can also include the costs borne by individuals (for example, the emotional costs of being a victim of crime). It is also important to recognise the importance of identifying and describing the intangible and qualitative benefits associated with the initiatives. This evaluation has also shown that these individual antisocial behaviour initiatives were shaped by local priorities and were characterised by local partnership working. However, local decision-making can only be cost-effective if it is based on sound and consistent information about the costs and range of benefits associated with specific interventions. This does not mean that identical decisions need to be made in all localities, but rather that robust and comprehensive data about costs and resources should be available to inform these local decision-making processes.
Chapter Summary
4.35 The research found evidence of improved agency performance in the case study neighbourhoods. The 2 main factors behind this improved performance were the effective deployment of a range of interventions and initiatives, and enhanced partnership working. These were underpinned by the improved coordination of multi-agency operational responses, based on the exchange of higher quality local data, and the facilitation of more holistic PIER- based interventions at individual, household and neighbourhood levels. Key drivers of these improvements were the commitment and capacity of local neighbourhood officers, allied to the targeting of significant resources and intensive interventions in relatively small defined localities.
4.36 The 3 most important forms of effective intervention were: the increasing visibility of an authority presence in local neighbourhoods, including community wardens, police officers and concierges and their impact on public disorder involving the antisocial behaviour of groups; coordinated and swift action to address environmental antisocial behaviour, including graffiti, vandalism, littering and fly-tipping; and a combination of legal enforcement measures and support and diversionary interventions targeted at the most problematic and vulnerable households. It was also recognised by agency officers that improvements within local neighbourhoods were sometimes due to other factors, including changes in the local population.
4.37 Despite these improvements, local agency officers identified some continuing weaknesses in agency performance. These included confusion and tensions between local authority and neighbourhood level interventions, the less prominent role being played by some local agencies and organisations, the limited funding and resources available, difficulties in demonstrating improvements to local residents, and engaging fully with all sections of local communities - including improving reporting rates.
4.38 Despite considerable data and methodological limitations, the economic evaluation of twelve selected antisocial behaviour initiatives found community wardens schemes in each of the 4 local authorities and the Early Intervention Families Project in Edinburgh to be cost-effective. Other initiatives, including mediation services in each of the 4 local authorities, had delivered benefits to local neighbourhoods, although it was not possible to quantify these benefits in economic terms. The evaluation found that wardens and mediations services were delivered differently in each local authority, reflecting local priorities and operational decisions. More robust and disaggregated economic data will be required to maximise the utility of future cost benefit evaluations of specific antisocial behaviour interventions.
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