Anti-social behaviour officers are patrolling estates day and night to tackle incidents blighting communities, says the area’s housing chief.
A restructure has seen an increase in the number of hours the patrols take place – with the team based in neighbourhoods from 8.30am until 2am seven days a week.
Previously, the service only operated during weekdays between standard working hours.
Peter Barry, chief housing officer, says the extra overnight hours are “critically important” as that is when much of the anti-social behaviour takes place.
But he said there is still much more to be done, particularly in communities where people are afraid to speak up through fear of reprisals.
The senior officer said he was “sickened” by a recent incident where neighbours were too scared to speak about what had happened.
Addressing councillors at a recent full council meeting, Mr Barry said: “We’ve extended the hours from a nine to five service to a service that runs until 2am and that’s critically important because that’s when a lot of the anti-social behaviour that concerns our constituents is being experienced.
“Now we’re in a situation where our operatives can effectively act as witnesses, including acting as witnesses in court, rather than relying on communities to provide their own witnesses.
“One example of that was a recent fire that broke out at one of our properties where it was our neighbourhood officers at night who noticed it and took all the immediate actions to get the emergency services in place and supported tenants so it’s definitely having an impact.”
He said he would like to take the service further to a point where communities felt more confident to call out unacceptable behaviour.
The officer explained: “We’ve taken an exceptionally positive approach to No Home For Domestic Abuse.
“Can I take the anti-social behaviour service to that level?
“Can we get to a level where people really feel they can call it out?
“No one should feel afraid in their home.
“There was an incident that reaffirms we have a long way to go.
“It was difficult to tell whether a crime had been committed and it affected several residents.
“No one was willing to speak and nobody said why but we know from our intelligence that it was because they were afraid of reprisals.
“That sickens me so we have to find a way around that.”
Councillor David McBride previously raised concerns over a high number of anti-social behaviour cases last year amid a decreasing budget to deal with them.
In 2017/18 the anti-social behaviour budget was £719,000 and there were 312 cases during that year.
However by 2020/21 the budget reduced to £398,000 and the number of anti-social behaviour cases had increased to 978.
Mr Barry explained that the higher figure was due to a change in the way cases are logged, commenting: “Previously we recorded cases, not as actual calls, but calls that then led to an investigation but now we are required to record all calls as cases.”
Councillor McBride welcomed the update but said more work needed to be done around addressing complex cases.
He said: “We still have the really difficult cases that we need to deal with and those are the ones which cause everybody the most trouble, mainly the residents who are suffering from it.
“Can we look at the most serious types of cases and see if there was a reason behind it?
“One of the reasons could be the person was really allocated a house probably not in the right area for them or for the people in that area.
“There’s no discrimination of people or people of different age groups who can live quite peacefully beside each other but sometimes that doesn’t always work because sometimes people have different lifestyles.
“It might be something that some neighbours tolerate and some neighbours can’t tolerate.”
Depute provost Karen Conaghan said: “The key thing for me was the fact that we’ve got so many more hours now.
“People in local communities are welcoming that they’re there at the weekend and for a longer period of
time.”
