Spotlight on community safety

Published: 2 July 2024

The safety of our tenants is our main priority and over the past 12 months our community safety team has dealt with 381 reports of anti-social behaviour (ASB) across Speke and Garston. The reports can vary from drug use, noise nuisance, cannabis cultivation to more serious incidents of assault and use of weapons.

Anti-social behaviour and serious crime can cause a decline in our neighbourhoods and our team works very closely with Merseyside Police to tackle all types of crime in our communities. Legal action is always our last resort, and we will always try to resolve any low-level ASB with other non-legal interventions, but in some cases, we do have to make the decision to take legal action. In the past 12 months, seven cases have involved legal action including securing civil injunctions, breaches of injunctions, and successfully obtaining possession back on two of our homes.

Tenant evicted for cannabis farm in home

One of the possession cases involved an extremely large cannabis cultivation inside one of our homes. We received anonymous information from the community about this issue which we forwarded to Merseyside Police, who developed further intelligence on the situation. Working closely with the police, we gained access to the home where we discovered the cannabis farm in one of the bedrooms.

We immediately took legal action which resulted in the tenant being evicted from their home.  We also discovered more criminal activity at the home as it became evident that the electricity meter had been tampered with – it was being bypassed to avoid paying for energy. The tampering was so severe that it left electricity wires exposed, which is extremely dangerous.  The tenant received a suspended sentence which they breached, so they were then sentenced to prison.

Injunction gained for aggressive behaviour

We understand that customers may get frustrated if they are unhappy with our services. The majority of the time, customers are patient and understanding as we aim to put things right. However, in some cases this frustration or anger has escalated into aggressive behaviour towards SLH employees and we will always take a zero-tolerance approach to this type of behaviour against colleagues or members of the community. Recently our community safety team took legal action against a tenant who became very aggressive when he visited our office.

The tenant was not happy with the outcome of a phone call with an SLH colleague and after the phone call took place, they visited the SLH office, displaying threatening and aggressive behaviour. This left several colleagues feeling fearful and intimidated. The community safety team took immediate action to protect colleagues and applied for a civil injunction preventing the tenant from being able to visit our office. This injunction was granted by the court. Legal action is always a last resort, and we will always look to resolve these issues but unfortunately in this case there was no other option. 

How we can help

If you are suffering from antisocial behaviour or are aware criminal activity in our neighbourhoods, contact our community safety team in confidence on 0330 303 3000. Please don’t suffer in silence, we will do everything we can to support you.