Member

The noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, herself brought some of the challenges into painfully sharp focus in her September 2024 report entitled, Still Living a Nightmare: Understanding the Experiences of Victims of Anti-social Behaviour. I do not need to remind your Lordships’ House that if there is one person who knows at a profound level what anti-social behaviour can do, it is the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, herself. Amendment 27 stems from the battle that many victims of anti-social behaviour face when they try to escalate their complaints. The first of these is the challenge of even being recognised as a victim of persistent anti-social behaviour, defined as experiencing three incidents within six months—the threshold for triggering the anti-social behaviour case review. But as each incident is often viewed in isolation by multiple different agencies, victims are frequently dismissed, ignored and, ultimately, failed. They are left to endure the dripping tap of repeated harm, routinely minimised as neighbourhood disputes, and this is despite some cases involving threats, criminal damage, arson, and even assault.