04 June 2004
The Home Office is set to take on board lessons from a controversial project designed to break the cycle of eviction faced by nuisance families.
The project, run by the children's charity NCH, has been running successfully in Dundee for the past seven years and a similar scheme was launched in Manchester in February this year.
The project houses problem families in secure council blocks and provides them with intensive support to help them tackle antisocial behaviour and eventually reintegrate them back into the community.
Last week, Home Secretary David Blunkett told a Big Conversation event in Oxford that there was provision in the Anti-Social Behaviour Act to make this kind of rehabilitation compulsory.
'We have built into the Antisocial Behaviour Act a facility that has not yet been used,' he said.
A Home Office spokesman told Public Finance that no announcement was imminent but added that there was a need to look specifically at the problem of families being constantly evicted and rehoused because of their antisocial behaviour.
Blunkett's recognition of the problem is thought to have emerged from last month's Home Office summit on the problem of nuisance neighbours. The summit was attended by NCH, along with a small number of other practitioners and academics.
Last October, Manchester – which evicted 283 households between 1995 and 2002 – secured £600,000 in Home Office funds to work with 150 of the city's most antisocial families.
Its project, called Foundations, was developed by Manchester City Council, Irwell Valley Housing Association and NCH.
Participating families are expected to abide by a set of strict rules and are evicted from the scheme if they indulge in antisocial behaviour. A spokesman for the Manchester project said the Dundee scheme had worked well. 'After NCH's intervention families have gone on to hold down regular tenancies and return to living independently within local communities.'
Shelter and other housing charities have criticised the current policy – by which nuisance neighbours are simply transferred to another area – for failing to provide a long-term solution.
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