The Community Safety Casework Team has brought together support services to victims and perpetrators of anti-social behaviour and hate crimes into a single team and has published service standards outlining the service that it is committed to provide. During 2012 a duty service started, enabling victims or witnesses to speak directly to officers at any time during working hours. From these reports, cases may be referred to the appropriate agency (eg. council housing) for their attention, or they may become cases for the Casework Team.
A ‘harm-based approach’ has been adopted whereby the circumstances of victims are assessed. Victims at highest risk are prioritised for attention and their cases are considered at regular Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Tasking meetings.
Brighton & Hove has been one of a few local authority areas to pilot the ‘Community Trigger’ which requires local authorities to take action to deal with an anti-social behaviour problem which has been flagged up by a number of residents. Findings from this pilot have fed into the development of the new ASB Act.