Social Housing Tenants: Antisocial Behaviour

I beg to move,

That this House has considered social housing tenants and antisocial behaviour.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. Let us imagine a Government who believe that a council house should be a privilege, not a right, and that people have to be of good standing and in full-time employment to secure the keys. Let us imagine a Government who support the idea that a council house should be given on suitability rather than a need for social housing. Let us then imagine that same Government supporting the idea that people should keep their council house in good order: keep it decorated, keep it well maintained, do the garden, empty the bins, and make sure that their families do not cause trouble on the street. There was such a Government who believed in all that: the 1940s Clement Attlee Government.

Clement Attlee built over 1 million homes in our great country, and all the things I have just mentioned were beliefs of the Labour Government at the time. But if we fast forward 80 years I think Captain Clem would be turning in his grave after looking at some of the council estates up and down the country, such as Carsic estate, Leamington estate, Coxmoor estate in Ashfield, and estates over in Mansfield such as Bull Farm and Ladybrook, where we have families creating mayhem and misery. People call them “feral families” in my neck of the woods. There are people who cause problems on every single council estate throughout Mansfield and Ashfield, and it is a big problem. In this place we have the power to sort that out. I did try under the last Government, but it fell on deaf ears.

Before I came to this place, one of the main complaints that I got—I am sure many hon Members will agree—was about antisocial behaviour on council estates, which destroys and ruins lives. Most of us MPs, I imagine, live in nice houses; we have security, CCTV and panic alarms. Some of us live in nice big posh pads in gated communities—it is all right for us. We do not have to go home each night and put up with horrible, nuisance, criminal behaviour.

Let us imagine coming home after a hard day’s work at the factory, as many people in Ashfield do, and all we can hear is swearing, verbal threats, intimidation, shouting, screaming, outrageous noises—sounds a bit like a Labour Cabinet meeting. Joking aside, that is happening in every constituency throughout our great country. Let us imagine that we put up with that behaviour when we get home from a hard day’s graft. We go to bed and the noise continues. We can hear music playing and the idiots from across the road revving their motorbikes up and down the street. We open the bedroom window in the summer and the stench of weed comes wafting in. Then we manage to get a few hours’ sleep.

At 6 o’clock the alarm clock goes off and those idiots are just about going to bed, because they have been up all night creating mayhem, causing crime, and being complete nuisances. Yet when we get up in the morning to go to work—to do a shift; to do our seven days to pay our taxes—we are paying for those yobs, those idiots, to live in their social housing. We pay for their rent and benefits, and we wonder why: “Why are we doing this? Why can’t these people live by our rules? Why can’t they integrate? Why can’t they live our way of life?”

Many years ago—I am going back about 30 years—Ashfield district council had a brainwave. We had one particular street on the Carsic council estate that was notorious for antisocial behaviour, crime and poor behaviour. The council put all the nuisance tenants on one street. I am not saying that was a solution, but that is what it did. So when anything kicked off with any crime, the police went straight to one street and nine times out of 10 they knew where the culprits were.

Then the Labour council had a brainwave: it decided to take every single nuisance family off the street, spread them around the estate and put them on different streets. It thought that was a good idea. It thought that the good behaviour of the surrounding streets would encourage those nuisance tenants to be good tenants, to be good neighbours, to integrate and to respect their neighbours, but the opposite happened.

Just a few months after, we realised that every single street on that estate was having problems with antisocial behaviour, so the council had taken the problem from one street and spread it out to every single street on the estate. It was a complete failure, and our police and councillors could do very little about it because they are not backed up by the courts. When we get a nuisance tenant in Ashfield, for example, the courts sometimes carry out a lengthy investigation. They tell the complainants, “Keep a diary,” and give them diary sheets for about two years until they are fed up to the back teeth of filling them out, and eventually they just stop complaining.

In 2022, a Government survey showed that 26%—nearly one in three—of social housing tenants suffer from antisocial behaviour. That is a disgrace in this country. A 2018 report by Nottingham Trent University said that social housing tenants are 30% more likely to see antisocial behaviour, crime, drug dealing and so on.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate on an issue that is exceptionally important in working-class areas. Does he agree that those who suffer most from the problem are those who live cheek by jowl with the very tenants he is talking about? It is working-class tenants in social housing, aspiring to a better life for them and their children, who suffer the most and are crying out for help and assistance to solve the problem.

I could not put it any better myself. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: it is the aspiring, decent, hard-working, working-class families who need a bit of a leg up. They get social housing—a council house—and they want to do the right thing; maybe at one stage they will actually buy the house. They put a shift in: mum and dad go to work, the kids behave themselves, but next door or across the road they have a nuisance family who are completely ruining their lives. That affects their mental health and it is absolutely shocking.

I rise to make a point about Wales. I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate, which has particular relevance to my consistency of Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe. Rural crime is defined as crime and antisocial behaviour occurring in rural areas, where we have plenty of social housing. In my region, just 0.24% of staff in the local police force are dedicated to rural crime units, despite the significant impact that that crime has on places such as Brecon and Ystradgynlais. Does he agree that antisocial behaviour is a significant issue across mid and south Wales too, and that police resourcing should reflect that challenge?

Well, yes, I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says, but I am not sure we can blame all that crime on council tenants or social housing tenants. I take his point.

I am surprised that I have not yet had an intervention from the Government Benches, because I usually get asked, “Where are these nuisance neighbours going to live? Where do we put them?” Well, on the record, hon. Members, I am not bothered where they go, but I have two options for those people. They can either behave themselves and become good tenants, good neighbours, and integrate, or they can do what other people—normal people—do: go and get a job, stop committing crime, work hard, save some money up for a deposit or save enough for a bond, and go and rent privately somewhere.

The important thing is that we need a deterrent. When I was a local councillor in Ashfield, we had youths in the local park who were creating mayhem, making fires and attacking people—all sorts of horrible, feral behaviour. The local council and the police had a real problem trying to sort the issue out, but after a bit of an investigation we found that the parents of a lot of the youths who were causing problems lived in social housing on the nearby estate, so we wrote to every single one and said, “If your child carries this on, you are breaching your tenancy agreement and we might have to look at booting you out.” The poor behaviour stopped straightaway—overnight.

That is one option that I hope Ministers can look at for social housing tenants with poor behaviour. I believe in the “three strikes and you’re out” rule, where people are given one warning, then another, and on the third warning they are gone. Quite frankly, I am not that interested in where those people go to live. My focus and concern are the decent, hard-working people who put a shift in, have not got much money and rely on social housing.

I agree with the 1940s Clement Attlee Government that the allocation of a council house should be based on suitability rather than need. To do that, we need to repeal some laws passed here 40 odd years ago—housing and homelessness legislation—and look at the people who are in priority need. Based on suitability, those who should have priority need are people who will respect the house, be good citizens, go to work and not be a nuisance in their neighbourhood.

Order. I remind Members that, should they wish to speak and be called in the debate, they need to bob. Members wishing to speak need to be here for the opening and closing statements. Wind-ups will begin at 10.30 am, with two minutes at the end for the mover of the motion.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I thank the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for securing this important debate. The Labour Government have a clear mission to tackle antisocial behaviour and halve violence against women and girls.

My constituency is troubled by endemic antisocial behaviour, both domestically and in our town centre. In addition, Mansfield is the worst affected town in Nottinghamshire for violent offences perpetrated by men against women. Hon. Members will know my concern for women’s welfare in both of those regards, having alluded to them in previous debates. My experience from listening to victims of antisocial behaviour in this context is that they are often women who are systematically failed by a response system unfit for purpose. That disadvantages women victims in their journey for justice when facing this abuse.

That is not a criticism of the police or necessarily of community safety and housing teams and officers in local authorities. Broadly speaking, my experience is that they are doing their utmost to deal with the situation, within the legal framework that they face and the resources that they have. Before I continue, I would like to pass on my gratitude to Nottinghamshire police, especially Inspector Davies and her neighbourhood team in Mansfield, as well as Mansfield district council, for engaging with my office about casework on issues outlined by the hon. Member for Ashfield. I can already see the impact of the new neighbourhood policing approach and strategy in Mansfield.

The hon. Member makes some great points. Does he agree that if we can get it right and stop this horrible nuisance behaviour in social housing, there would be hardly any need for the police to come, thus saving police resources?

Indeed, and I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I agree, and I will address that in my comments.

We need named neighbourhood officers taking ownership of their patches in council estates and social housing areas in our town and becoming part of the community again. We are already beginning to see in multi-agency meetings the impact that that can have.

In the press over the weekend and again today, the hon. Member has talked about his desire to implement a three-strike rule for social housing tenants that would see them evicted after three instances of antisocial behaviour that meets the evidence threshold to demonstrate it. I would argue that this proposition is somewhat too liberal and lenient and does not go far enough to address the issues.

I am astounded that the hon. Member disagrees on this point. Will he now agree to a one-strike-and-out rule?

That is exactly what I am saying. I wish to address the issues that are being endured by social housing tenants at the hands of those who are consistently perpetrating domestic antisocial behaviour in their neighbourhoods, and a “three strikes and you’re out” approach would take many, many years of them suffering this type of abuse. I will outline why I think such an approach would be lacking in its effectiveness of outcome and deterrence.

First, my experience is that there are issues with the evidence threshold. Councils in my area and many others are asking victims of antisocial behaviour in social housing to bear the burden of proof by taking their own recordings and notes and submitting them. Many constituents who attend my surgeries have gone through all the stress and anxiety of doing that on numerous occasions, having put their mental wellbeing and often their personal security at risk, only to then be told that the evidence does not meet the threshold required to instigate an intervention.

I agree very much with the hon. Member’s points, and I wonder if he is a member of the right party on that basis. Is he not dismayed that the Secretary of State has ditched our plans to remove social housing for people who are consistently guilty of antisocial behaviour?

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. My dismay is at what I hear from my constituents, many of whom have suffered for many years trying to prove a single instance of antisocial behaviour. Indeed, they are often then notified that the advised method of evidence collection—often recordings on a mobile phone app—does not satisfy the evidential requirements to take action. After many years of threats to their own security and a great deal of effort, they find that the action is dropped and has to be started again. This is not an isolated incident in my constituency. Many, many women—and it is almost always women—have come to me in tears at my surgeries.

The hon. Member is being very generous with his time. He has mentioned women quite a lot in his speech, but let us talk about pensioners. We have this nonsense in Ashfield where there are flats and bungalows that were designed for pensioners and over-65s, but sadly, as some of them die off, the local council, with another brainwave, has started putting nuisances in these flats: druggies, ex-cons—people who live a life of criminality. When they put one of these people in a flat, all their friends and family come to visit, and it is creating problems in flats that were designed just for the over-65s. Does the hon. Member think we should have a policy to stop this straightaway and let these old people live in peace?

Again, I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. The experience that I have from casework tells me many of those things also; I see many examples of such casework at my surgery. I think councils should and must be better equipped for enforcement action than they are today. They need to make a dedicated response. It needs to be backed by stronger regulation. They need to work more closely alongside the police to gather evidence of reports of antisocial behaviour. I would hope that, in turn, that would free up our police officers to respond to more serious criminal activity, rather than having to focus their resources on these recurring incidents.

Secondly, in my outlook, affording up to three strikes under the current system may well perpetuate the crisis, leaving some of those upstanding and decent social housing tenants at the mercy of problem tenants in neighbourhoods in my constituency. I fear that tenants in neighbouring properties would be subject to a process that could take years to conclude or that failed to do so because of loopholes and inconsistencies in their self-collected evidence.

We have a new Labour Government. We are looking to renew the social contract between the state and individuals, but part of that contract requires certain commitments of responsibility to earn the rights that it provides. Like all other citizens, social housing tenants should be expected to respect their neighbours and not contribute to antisocial behaviour, or they should forfeit the right to be housed by their council. In my outlook, rather than affording three strikes, this should be a zero-tolerance policy, and I am confident that my constituents who suffer at the hands of those engaged in antisocial behaviour in their neighbourhoods would agree with me.

Finally, I want to outline the mechanism that I have collaborated in with Mansfield police and Mansfield district council to tackle this issue. It has in part been made possible by the Government’s neighbourhood policing strategy and the direction of Nottinghamshire police, under the Labour police and crime commissioner, Gary Godden. Often, antisocial behaviour is complex in nature and a multifaceted, multi-agency approach is required to resolve it—something that, in my limited experience, should prevent passing of the buck. However, that collaboration can only be as effective as the legislative support that it has to operate under. We have seen the effect that Government policy is already having on neighbourhood policing, and stronger powers for councils would enable them to provide peace and security for respecting and respectable social housing tenants who abide by their tenancy contracts and reflect our British values of decency towards their neighbours.