Why Reading Council is considering 10-year housing bans for badly-behaved tenants

Reading Borough Council (RBC) members last night approved a consultation on changes to its housing allocations policy, including increasing how long people are banned from accessing the housing register for anti-social behaviour.

Currently, the ban is for three years, but the council is asking residents for the feedback on plans to increase the standard to between five and 10 years.

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Why is such a long ban considered necessary?

Currently, if you have been evicted from social housing for breach of tenancy – you will be excluded for three years from your eviction date

But the council says after three years some residents are still not suitable to become a tenant due to ongoing bad behaviour.

It is proposing changes to the policy so that it would first assess every individuals’ behaviour, with the option to increase the ban to five to 10 years for those who continue to behave poorly.

Reading Borough Council offices

Councillor John Ennis, lead member for Housing at RBC, said: “99 per cent of council tenants are law-abiding community-minded people whose lives are blighted by a small minority.

“I think we need to send a message to our tenants, which is that we hear you.

“We hear you when you raise these issues, and we’re pleased that you are raising them and we’re going to act.

“I think it’s really important that we go out and listen to what people have to say about the allocations. I think it is due a consultation.”

Councillor Clare Grashoff said: “Anti-social behaviour is a nightmare.

“I have been there. It affects your life, it affects how you feel whenever you are in your home and it is horrendous.”

New anti-social behaviour policy

The council also approved a new anti-social behaviour policy last night, including:

• Resetting of client expectations and clarification on what constitutes antisocial behaviour
• Renewed focus on the most serious cases as opposed to one-off incidents
• A new procedure which provides flexibility to officers to escalate actions to ensure that victims of anti-social behaviour are protected and anti-social behaviour is resolved

The new procedure will include a four-week enquiry stage to establish whether a case investigation will be triggered.

Any enquiries that do not meet the threshold for a case investigation will be closed.

Reported cases of anti-social behaviour in Reading have increased by around 47 per cent in Reading in the last five years, with 230 reports in 2016/17 and 338 in 2020/21.

Councillor Jo Lovelock, ward councillor for Norcot and former leader of the council, said: “We need to be clear with the public how they can help with this situation.

“Whether its drug dealing, noise, whatever it is that’s making your life intolerable, we need to find a way to communicate with the public on how best to report and record this.

“Unless the officers get good evidence, they can’t do very much.”

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Councillors also raised concerns about the impact of cuts to policing numbers and community centres on handling anti-social behaviour.

Cllr Lovelock added: “In west Reading, we have a very small team of officers covering three large wards with lots of issues going on.

“It is virtually impossible for them to keep up with everything.

“We used to have wardens and youth workers. All those resources are not there anymore because of the cuts.”

Cllr Jo Lovelock

Other new policies proposed include giving greater priority to key workers, simplifying the housing register by reducing the number of bands and making it easier for those in council housing to move home.

A consultation will run for eight weeks on the plans.