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Respect action plan: At-a-glance | | The government has published an "action plan" designed to deal with what it calls a lack of respect among a minority of Britons. In large letters, the front page of the 44-page document declares: "The only person who can start the cycle of respect is you." The measures announced in the plan - many of which are projects and legislation already launched - are as follows:
YOUNG PEOPLE A national youth volunteering service to fund gap year volunteering in the UK and abroad for youngsters who otherwise could not afford it. Money had already been committed to increase the number of young volunteers. Introduce proposals set out in Youth Matters Green Paper, including looking into facilities available for young people in their area and making sure they are adequate. There are plans to pilot a new Youth Opportunity Card, which can be used for discounts on activities - they will be topped up with financial credits to encourage youngsters, but docked for anti-social behaviour. Target disadvantaged young people through sport and art, by working with organisations like Sport England and Arts Council England. Expand existing mentoring projects, such as the Sports Champions programme.
SCHOOLS The Education Bill, due out this year, includes plans to tackle bad behaviour, such as giving clear legal rights for school staff to discipline pupils, enabling schools and councils to use parenting contracts before a pupil has been excluded, and letting schools apply for parenting orders. Behaviour and truancy partnerships will be in all secondary schools by September 2007, the plan reiterates. In the existing scheme, funds are handed over from local authorities to schools, to help them buy the services they need to help. A project targeting 146 secondary schools with 8,000 of the most persistent truants is to be extended to a total of 200 schools (13,000 persistent truants). It includes individual action plans with support from youth and social services, plus penalty notices or prosecution for non-compliance. Guidance planned for Spring 2006, to prevent "unofficial exclusions" where teachers send pupils home for disciplinary reasons without following the rules for exclusion. The Education Bill also includes new duties for local authorities to have someone responsible for identifying children missing from school, plus proposals for improving services for children who have been excluded.
PARENTING Increase support for parents of children at risk - pathfinder projects, from April, will aim to provide better "support packages" for individual cases. Help prevent youth crime and anti-social behaviour, with �45m over three years for the Youth Justice Board, which advises the home secretary, oversees and monitors the youth justice system and works to prevent offending and reoffending. It will be spent on projects that include intervening in parenting. Increase availability of parenting classes for teenage parents, and provide better incentives such as money for education and childcare. Expand the use of parenting orders - court orders currently used by local education authorities and youth offending teams. A new category of "serious misbehaviour" will trigger an order, before a child is excluded from school; schools will now be able to seek the orders directly; and councils have new powers to use more agencies to help fulfil parenting contracts and orders, such as community safety and housing officers. Increase the consideration of parenting issues used in court pre-sentence reports and youth offending work.
PROBLEM FAMILIES Sanctions for those evicted for anti-social behaviour, who refuse help, such as fines or curbing housing benefit. Set up a national network of "intensive family support schemes", which will include job centres and health services. Write a cross-government strategy on problem families. This could include designing a model response to problem households, researching where the gaps in services are, and simplifying how funding is sought.
COMMUNITIES AND POLICING More power for communities over policing of their area, including the right to formally request action is taken and to demand to know why if it is not. Councillors can refer police to local scrutiny committees to investigate and give deadlines for action. "Face the public" sessions where senior representatives from the police and council answer for their actions. They can also raise with the public anything they could do to help with anti-social behaviour. Extend the neighbourhood wardens scheme, which the government says has had success in reducing crime. Ensure all government housing regeneration schemes include ways to tackle bad behaviour such as neighbourhood wardens, "assertive" housing management and parenting programmes. This also includes new protocols for the nine Pathfinder schemes - which are trying to revive unpopular places where the housing market has collapsed - to make sure they also deliver on "respect". New contracts (Local Area Agreements) already in use between local authorities and central government - which the plan says will be in all councils by 2007 - will include a compulsory requirement to get results on respect and anti-social behaviour. Neighbourhood policing teams to co-operate with residents over what the priorities should be. Better local access to police via a named contact. A national non-emergency phone number for community safety advice and action. Five areas due to go live with it in summer; to go across England and Wales during 2008. Social landlords and tenants to work together to set standards of behaviour and uphold them, via a "respect standard for housing management". Incentives for those who behave, protection for complainants and witnesses and fast action against perpetrators are among the measures. Neighbourhood Charters, explaining what people in an area expect from each other and from those who provide their services.
ENFORCEMENT The government will consult on new powers to close and board up properties where anti-social behaviour is persistent. These are already used for drug-related problems, such as crack houses. They would be for a set period and would apply to both owned and rented houses. Research on how to strengthen summary powers - immediate solutions, such as fines, that do not require going to court. Review of current fixed penalty notices. Increase Penalty Notices for Disorder (PNDs) - fines given out for unacceptable behaviour - from �80 to �100. These will also be piloted on under-16s, and it will be made easier for trading standards officers to issue them to people who sell alcohol or fireworks to those under-age. Bring in new ways of carrying out "conditional cautions" for low-level offending, which could include community work. Currently they only require payment of compensation. Improve Asbos (anti-social behaviour orders) by updating guidance on effective use. Asbos are the key power in the respect agenda because they give authorities the ability to try and control an individual's behaviour in a manner that they see fit. The Environment Agency will also be able to apply for Asbos to tackle crimes like vandalism, noise nuisance and fly-tipping. Also consulting on delegating council Asbo powers to other bodies which manage their housing, such as PFI schemes or Tenant Management Organisations. Improve Asbis (anti-social behaviour injunctions). These are similar to Asbos but can be used by social landlords to tackle nuisance tenants, or people creating havoc on estates that they manage. Injunctions can be sought by the landlord (such as a housing association) to deal with drug dealing, barking dogs, violence against housing workers and so on. It can also be used to exclude people from certain areas of an estate. The plan says the courts have been interpreting them too narrowly, which gives inadequate protection to victims and witnesses. Change Local Government Injunctions - used to break up major drug activity - so that those suspected of breaching one can be brought before the courts within 24 hours of arrest. More rights for lay people working on tackling anti-social behaviour to appear in civil court actions. The plan says legal costs are currently a barrier to smaller groups taking action or are used as an "excuse for inaction". Reduce the threshold on seizing cash made from the proceeds of crimes such as drug dealing, from �5,000 to �1,000. Increase protection for public service workers, for example with a new offence of obstructing the progress of ambulance workers. The plan will also look at giving courts guidance to deal "robustly" with assaults on people serving the public, and whether NHS trusts need better powers to remove people from their units. Under the banner of "improving community justice", the plan cites existing work being done to set up special anti-social behaviour response courts, and to train specialist prosecutors in anti-social behaviour. The plan intends to extend these initiatives to civil courts, with special advocates to help increase understanding of anti-social behaviour cases and work with victims and witnesses. Make unpaid community work being done by offenders "visible" to others to increase credibility of community sentences, via the existing Community Payback scheme.
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