Antisocial Behaviour (ASB) information sheet

Antisocial behaviour is when someone acts in a way that causes harassment, alarm, or distress to others. Your landlord can help when these issues affect you in your home.

This could include:

• noise
• abusive or intimidating behaviour by neighbours
• drug dealing or substance misuse
• vandalism or graffiti
• uncontrolled, and noisy pets
• harassment, including hate incidents
• dog fouling, rubbish, or fly tipping on your property or in a communal area
• vehicles that block your driveway or entry

To help you, landlords may need to work with your local authority or the police. They have different responsibilities to landlords and specific legal powers.

Contact your landlord to report antisocial behaviour. You should:

• keep a log of incidents with dates and times
• ask your landlord about its ASB policy
• report crimes or threats to the police
• let the landlord know if you need support

Reporting noise

Read our separate support guide to report noise to your landlord if it is affecting your home.

Noise complaints fact sheet

Your landlord should have a published policy that explains how they will respond. :

• assessing the risk the ASB could have on you and others
• mediation between you and the other party
• gathering evidence – this might mean speaking to other neighbours or checking CCTV where available
• asking you to complete diary sheets or provide photos or recordings
• making ‘good neighbour agreements’
• creating an action plan with everyone involved
• issuing a warning to the person causing the problems
• installing sound monitoring equipment
• applying to court for an order to have the perpetrator removed from their property

Find out more about how landlords should respond to reports of ASB.

 Antisocial behaviour key topic page

Reporting antisocial behaviour is different from making a complaint about your landlord.

People often call both ‘a complaint’, but they are different.

You can complain if you’re unhappy with how your landlord has handled your ASB report.

A complaint might be about:

• the level of investigation or action taken by the landlord
• the time it took the landlord to investigate or respond
• any action it should not have done, or you are unhappy with – for example, wrongly accusing a resident of causing antisocial behaviour

To do this, you must use the landlord's formal complaint procedure.

Landlords' response to complaints

Your landlord must reply to a complaint in line with its complaint procedure. Our Complaint Handling Code sets out the timescales a landlord must respond to a complaint.

Stage 1:

• acknowledge the complaint within 5 working days of it being received
• respond, in writing, within 10 working days of the date the complaint was acknowledged

Stage 2:

• acknowledge a request to escalate the complaint within 5 working days of it being received
• respond, in writing, within 20 working days of the escalation request being acknowledged

You can bring a complaint to us for investigation if your landlord does not resolve your issues through their complaint procedure.

Tell us:

• what went wrong
• what your landlord should do to put things right

We need your landlord's stage 2 response before we can help. This is their final answer to your complaint.

You can refer your complaint to us within 12 months of your landlord's stage 2 response. We’re unlikely to investigate complaints referred after this deadline unless there are good reasons for the delay.

Help if your landlord does not reply to your complaint

We can help you get a response from your landlord if they do not follow their complaint process or our Complaint Handling Code.

Send us a copy of the complaint you raised to your landlord. This helps us understand if your landlord follows its complaint process.

The easiest way to do this is by using our helpful online form. The form asks you about your complaint and you can upload supporting evidence.

Online complaint form

If you own your home

We do not investigate complaints from people that own their own home (freeholders) about ASB caused by someone that lives in social housing. 

ASB help

ASB is a national charity that offer free, confidential support to anyone experiencing ASB.

ASB help

Community Trigger (ASB Case Review)

Request a case review from your local council if you’ve reported ASB 3 times in 6 months without a resolution. Find out more

Community Trigger