The Financial Impact
Anti-social behaviour imposes a variety of costs. At the extreme, it causes demolition
of recently built property and zero value of assets. The cost of demolition has been
estimated at around £5,000 per dwelling. This is in addition to the significant cost
of re-landscaping the site and compensating previous tenants or owners. 19:
Incidents of anti-social behaviour have very high costs in terms of housing management
time. One study estimated that 20 per cent of social landlords’ housing management
time was spent on dealing with complaints about neighbours’ behaviour. 20
Few landlords keep separate information on legal costs: LAs estimate the cost of
legal action on anti-social behaviour to be around £10,000 per case.
21
A study estimated the unit costs of intervention by LA housing departments by form
and level of intervention to be: 22
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Informal intervention
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£50
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Special tenancy transfer (involving one party of dispute)
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£824
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Case involving legal advice but stopping short of court action
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£365
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Notice to seek possession served
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£596
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Application for injunction
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£1,239
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Granting of (contested) possession order
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£3,908
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Aggregate Costs
There is a lack of basic information regarding the financial costs of anti-social
behaviour. Very few landlords record how much they spend each year on preventing and
responding to incidents of anti-social behaviour. There is little data of the costs
on service providers such as the police, fire brigade and housing associations, or
on organisations whose premises are the victims of anti-social behaviour. More information
in this area is required. Examples of estimated costs include:
Bradford has calculated that vandalism to LA property in 1998-99 cost the authority
£895,593. This is in addition to the £114,000 spent repairing properties following
burglary 23
Leeds LA estimated the costs of anti-social behaviour to be between £3 million
and £5 million a year; 24
Recent research has estimated the direct costs to the victim and criminal justice
system of vandalism to be £450 per incident. Based on the number of incidents in the
latest British Crime Survey, the total direct cost of all these incidents exceeds
£1.3 billion;25
A study by NACRO estimated that dealing with anti-social behaviour costs LA
housing departments over £100,000 a year each; 26
A study of costs of vandalism in schools in Scotland estimated that the bill
for insuring against vandalism and damage was higher than the amount spent on books
each year 27
Salford Housing Department estimated that anti-social behaviour by tenants
cost it £2 million per year 28
A study of the costs of crime in Hull estimated that overall the cost to the
city was £177 million per annum, comprising £37 million in crime prevention measures,
£49 million responding to crime and £30 million in prosecuting and dealing with offenders.
29
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