South Lanarkshire Council has been successful in tackling anti-social behaviour in the past year.
The local authority shared its success with councillors on Wednesday (November 2) at the Executive Committee meeting. Efforts were welcomed by elected members.
In November 2019, the council launched the South Lanarkshire Anti Social Behaviour Strategy 2019 to 2023 which set out priorities to be addressed and the actions that would be taken throughout the strategy.
There are six outcomes of the strategy, and each one has seen progress in the past year.
The first outcome is ‘people behave responsible in their attitude to alcohol and the impact of drug misuse is reduced’.
This outcome saw success as there was a decrease of 22 per cent in hospital admissions, demonstrating a downward trend in the number of hospital admissions for binge drinking.
Councillor Andrea Cowan (Rutherglen Central and North) praised the efforts of the council in tackling alcohol misuse, and said: “I just wanted to note a couple of points which I thought were impressive, the 22 per cent decrease in binge drinking hospital admissions, I think is a sign that the work is making a difference.”
Councillor Mo Razzaq welcomed the statistics but said there are still a lot of issues surrounding alcohol misuse.
He said: “One of the outcomes is a decrease in hospital admissions for binge drinking which is great news, but unfortunately the number of alcohol deaths in Scotland has risen so I think there’s still a lot to be done with issues with alcohol.”
For the second outcome ‘people behave responsible in relation to fire safety’ there was some success as the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service delivered six Fire Reach Courses with 53 young people attending.
Councillor Katy Loudon thanked the Fire Service for its work, and said: “I’d just like to praise the work for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service here, we are talking about something significant here that 53 young people have taken part.
“I’ve spoken to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service recently and it’s several thousand children and young people they’re going to be in contact with across South Lanarkshire and they sent me details, I just want to highlight the fact they are doing some significant work.”
The third outcome is ‘the impact of domestic noise is reduced’, and this was targeted through the referral pathway between community and enterprise resources, environmental services and housing and technical resources’ mediation services which is successful with immediate referrals from the Noise Team.
The referral pathway ensures effective partnership working and early intervention stops disputes escalating to more serious anti-social behaviour.
Councillor Cowan welcomed the increase in mediation referrals, and said: “I’m pleased to see the mediation referrals have jumped significantly, it shows that residents are engaging with the service. I think that’s something to be encouraged.”
For the fourth outcome: ‘illegally discarded litter and household waste is reduced’ the council launched The Good Neighbourhood project during the last year to encourage people to use waste collection bins correctly.
The council’s fifth outcome is ‘levels of disorder are reduced, improving safety within communities’ and this has seen successful progress with a 9.1 per cent fall in anti-social behaviour incidents during 2021/2022 compared to the previous year.
For the final outcome, ‘partners engage with residents to promote and improve the availability of and access to services for those affected by antisocial behaviour’ the council achieved progress in this by seeing the number of mediation referrals increasing by 39 percent from the previous year.
This continues a positive trend of increasing the use of mediation to prevent anti-social behaviour disputes escalating and to prevent future anti-social behaviour occurring.
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