Community Trigger

Anti-social behaviour is any aggressive, intimidating, or destructive activity that damages or destroys another person's quality of life. Community Triggers will make it easier for victims and communities to get this behaviour stopped. The Community Trigger has been created to give victims and communities the right to demand that persistent anti-social behaviour is dealt with.

The purpose of the Community Trigger is to enable members of the public to ask for a review of their anti-social behaviour case. This will allow all involved agencies to assess the way in which the complaint(s) have been dealt with so far, and what further actions can be put in place to resolve the issue.

We work with other agencies including Police, Clinical Commissioning Group and housing providers to tackle anti-social behaviour. Together we have a duty to undertake a review of how we have dealt with a case when a complainant is dissatisfied with the outcome, and the case meets certain criteria.

The Community Trigger can be used by any victim of anti-social behaviour or by any person acting on their behalf, for example a family member, friend, carer, councillor, MP or other professional person. This is intended to ensure that all victims are able to use the Community Trigger. However, the victim's consent should be sought by the person using it on their behalf.

The Community Trigger should not be used to complain about a single organisation. If your complaint is about an individual organisation you are advised to follow their company complaints procedure.

How can I use the Community Trigger?

To meet the requirements of the Community Trigger threshold, 1 of the following criteria must be met:

• 3 or more complaints in the last 6 months from 1 individual about the same problem
• 5 individuals complaining about the same or similar incidents in the last 6 months
• 1 incident motivated by hate in the last 6 months from one individual.

You can request a Community Trigger request by completing the Community Trigger request form (Word doc) [18KB] and emailing it to contact@chorley.gov.uk.

What happens next?

Once you have returned the Community Trigger Form with the details of the complaints and consent, we will ask the agencies involved to provide details of your complaints and the actions that they have considered and taken. Dependant on the case this can take up to 4 weeks, but we will try to complete this sooner where possible.

You will be informed whether or not the trigger threshold has been met. If a decision is made that your case does not meet the Community Trigger threshold then the individual agencies will continue to engage with you through their normal methods of dealing with anti-social behaviour.

If met, a case review will be undertaken by the partner agencies. Agencies will share information related to the case, review what action has previously been taken and decide whether additional actions are possible.

The review encourages a problem solving approach aimed at dealing with some of the most persistent, complex cases of anti-social behaviour.

The applicant is informed of the outcome of the review. Where further actions are necessary an action plan will be discussed with the applicant, including timescales after the review meeting.

Please Note: When a case review meeting is carried out recommendations may be made involving other organisations. They are not obliged to carry out any recommendations; however, they should consider them and may be challenged if they choose not to carry them out without good reason.