Anti-social behaviour is a way of acting that causes harm or distress to someone else. We could be talking about a one-off incident or an ongoing problem. Anti-social behaviour ruins lives and communities, so we take every report very seriously.
The tricky thing is, anti-social behaviour is quite a broad term – many of us have different interpretations of what anti-social behaviour is.
Severe forms of anti-social behaviour need fast action, whilst other types of conduct might be inconsiderate or annoying, but we don’t class them as anti-social behaviour.
If someone’s behaviour is upsetting you, the first thing to do is to decide whether this is anti-social behaviour or if it’s classed as irritating behaviour.
What is classed as anti-social behaviour
Anti-social behaviour is generally things like:
- Intimidation, verbal abuse or making threats
- Hate crime or harassment
- Persistent noise and rowdy behaviour
- Vandalism, graffiti or criminal damage to property
- Criminal behaviour
- Arson
- Anti-social drinking
- Drug dealing
What is not classed as anti-social behaviour
As irritating or annoying as some of these things might be, we do not treat these as anti-social behaviour:
- Babies crying
- Cooking smells
- DIY during reasonable hours
- Off-peak activity due to overtime or night shifts
- One-off parties – where a disturbance is unlikely to happen very often
- Children playing
- Gatherings of people on street corners or in parks (so long as they’re behaving)
- Minor personal differences
- Poor parking
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