Victims of anti-social behaviour have often faced previous challenges, Lincolnshire officials have found

Members of Lincolnshire County Council’s community safety scrutiny committee received an update on the progress of the authority’s anti-social behaviour project.

The county council has allocated £1 million towards investigating the causes of anti-social behaviour and developing a strategy to address the issue.

The project is managed and sponsored by the Community Safety Service which works in partnership with Lincolnshire Police to deliver the programme.

The project has two strands – one which focuses on adults and the other which focuses on children and young people.

As part of the children’s strand – which has been named the ‘Beyond’ project – the community safety team has visited schools across Lincolnshire to encourage ‘positive community relations’.

As part of its adult strand, the team conducted a series of investigations and identified 37 repeat and vulnerable adult victims of anti-social behaviour.

It then conducted a second study with 17 individuals where police data had shown them to be repeat or vulnerable adult victims of anti-social behaviour.

It found that the people most likely to become a victim of anti-social behaviour often faced existing challenges or health issues.

At a meeting on Tuesday, February 24, Clare Newborn, head of community safety, explained that there were a range of factors which can increase a person’s risk of harm.

She said: “You’ll see there in terms of the findings that a significant number – 15 of the 17 – had multiple underlying complexities that were likely to have contributed to the circumstances of the reported anti-social behaviour.

“Impaired cognitive function was a real kind of stand-out feature for these individuals. When we talk about that, I’m referring to diagnosed and undiagnosed mental health issues, but also various forms of dementia, learning difficulties and disabilities and even brain injuries – which we saw on more than one occasion.

“It’s also important to recognise that within that cohort, who were considered not only to be repeat victims of anti-social behaviour but there were actually some allegations having levelled at them in terms of perpetrating anti-social behaviour that had required some kind of enforcement activity, either by police or district council colleagues.”

Councillors heard that people who had been victims of financial harm or exploitation and domestic abuse were also more likely to be victims of anti-social behaviour.

The investigation concluded that local organisations need to work together to support victims of anti-social behaviour to ensure that these adults receive the right support at the earliest opportunity.

The community safety team said it’s now developing an action plan to address the issue.

Coun Karen Lee (Labour – Ermine and Cathedral) backed the project.

She said: “I think nearly all of our communities are affected by ASB. The thing is change doesn’t happen by accident.

“You have to put some resources in and do something to initiate that change. We’ve all heard the people who say ‘oh in my day, I walked 10 miles to school and back, chewing on an Oxo cube, and I was grateful for that’.

“But actually, we are where we are now, and we have to do something to tackle it.”