Learning from severe maladministration – July 2025

Learning from hate crime and harassment

Our casework shows residents can be subjected to hate crime and it can involve different protected characteristics. Landlords should examine their complaints to be confident they have the right support and approach in place.

Hate crime has specific connotations for the landlords handling. This should involve specific recording of incidents. It may mean the landlord requires a separate policy and procedure. Effective policies of this kind see landlords taking early, firm, and effective action against alleged perpetrators, including those who do not respond to support offered. Landlords should also reflect on their communication when residents report hate crime to treat it with seriousness and sensitivity.

Wider than initial reports, landlords should monitor hate crime incidents across its homes. They should identify any persistent alleged perpetrators and use this information to improve services offered.

Learning from multi-agency cooperation

In more complex cases the landlord may need to work with other bodies to resolve ASB. This could be the police, who may be investigating incidents themselves, as well as the local authority and health agencies. This interaction could inform the landlords own risk assessment, action plan, and communication with the resident. The landlord may start the engagement or react to it. In some cases, this could become part of a formal, multiagency case review.

When partnerships work well, information is shared quickly. This allows for safe interventions that reduce risks and minimise resident distress. However, effective multiagency working can be undermined where there are limited resources, poor information sharing or poor relationship management. Landlords should consider whether those are underlying causes when reviewing complaints, and how to reduce them.

Landlords should not become too dependent on police action for outcomes. It should be a partnership, and it needs to fulfil its own management responsibilities. This extends to updating the resident on its partnership working and what that means for them.

Learning from Antisocial Behaviour (ASB) and repairs

Events during an Antisocial Behaviour (ASB) case can lead to damage to a resident’s home or can be made worse where there are disputes over issues such as boundaries. Without ASB, landlords would still be expected to respond in line with its repairs policy. But it may wish to prioritise the works where these repairs can be a contributing factor to the ASB.

Doing so will involve effective coordination and internal communication between different teams as well as involvement with the resident. Where repairs are delayed, this could cause serious distress to the resident.

It will also undermine trust in the landlord overall handling. Landlords should also be conscious of a resident reporting both ASB and unrelated disrepair, but the overall effect this living environment could be having on the resident. These were highlighted in our recent Spotlight report, Repairing Trust.

Where these concerns have shown to be present in a complaint, the landlord should explore why there was a disconnect between different teams.

Learning from action plans

A repeated cause of complaints about landlord handling of ASB stems from mismanaging expectations. This shows why landlords must clearly communicate what, when and how they will respond to the situation. Often this response can be made possible through an agreed action plan.

An action plan is a 2-way agreement with the resident. Landlords should take overall responsibility for starting it. But the plan will often include steps the resident will need to take, such as keeping diary sheets.

However, landlords should not use action plans just to buy time. They must take immediate steps to solve problems.

Therefore, a good action plan needs to be a working document, helping the landlord to respond quickly as situations develop. This can also reduce the stress and anxiety about the situation and provide confidence the landlord has heard their concerns.

The action plan can also support the landlord’s communication. It can summarise when the resident can next expect contact from the landlord and when its progress will be reviewed. It also allows the landlord to make clear and consistent decisions which all colleagues can understand when they are involved on the case.

Learning from risk assessments

A vital tool for landlords is risk assessing reports of ASB. The 2014 ASB Crime and Policing Act guidance requires risk assessments. Landlords must check for potential harm and vulnerabilities when they receive ASB reports.

Not doing risk assessments early puts everyone at a disadvantage. This often leads to service failures later in the case.

Landlords should verify if their policies include risk assessments and specify when to use them. Landlords should explore any disconnect between the policy and practice on the ground.

Landlords must spot and respond to residents' needs. This includes health issues, both physical and mental. This could influence the risk assessment and approach the landlord takes. Landlords could consider how these circumstances were recorded on its systems. It could also consider how the information was used and if there were any missed opportunities to identify.

The landlord may consider it needs to involve other services based on the circumstances of the resident. This could include signposting to appropriate support agencies or beginning safeguarding measures. Staff should update risk assessments whenever the resident's circumstances change.

Case handlers should also consider how the organisation responded to this information. A failure to adjust its service could mean a resident was more effected than another person. The landlord should reflect any shortcomings in how it makes things right. This could include whether it needs to apologise to the residents as well as considering redress.

Learning from communications and complaint handling

Home is an emotional place and experiencing ASB can cause deep distress. Persistent or repeated ASB can have a debilitating effect on residents, even more so over a period.

We have previously proposed the 4 Ts of effective communication: timely, transparent, tailored and appropriate tone. This approach also applies to ASB communication. Landlords need to balance empathy with impartiality. This matters when working with multiple residents and while keeping resident safety the priority. Landlords can consider whether it and the resident would benefit from a contact arrangement to guide involvement. This could form part of any action plan.

When it comes to complaint handling, landlords can confuse whether the resident’s complaint is about ASB or the landlord’s response to it.

This happens when landlords let different service teams handle complaints instead of using one central team. Landlords should also ensure they have a clear distinct between a service requests and complaints, as per the Complaint Handling Code. These separate issues should be triaged accordingly. This not only helps landlords recover any service failures in the individual case. It also helps learning from its complaints to improve its handling of ASB overall.

Learning from noise

Noise nuisance can seriously undermine community cohesion and resident’s well-being. We have previously highlighted how landlords can conflate noise transference with ASB. This means they miss opportunities for preventative work through an effective good neighbourhood policy.

However, in these cases, the noise reported was integral to handling the ASB. They show the particularly debilitating effect that noise can have on the resident reporting it. Often noise can be a symptom of other activities that are the root cause of ASB but the landlord risks losing sight of, such as illegal sub-letting.

Where this happens, an opportunity can be missed to resolve the issue rather than manage the effect of it. Similarly, responding to noise nuisance can involve liaison with other parties, such as the police or environmental health. It is important this coordination is effective, and the resident is clear what each body is doing. For local authority landlords, this involves effective internal communication, which can sometimes be absent.