Tony Lloyd
Main Page: Tony Lloyd (Labour - Rochdale)I am not sure that I need to use those powers, because my hon. Friend has used his considerable influence and I now understand that the housing association is having a rethink and looking into other ways of dealing with Linden Court, which I visited with him a few years ago. It is important that, when elderly persons are being moved out of their homes, they should be treated with enormous dignity, and local authorities and housing associations need to go about that task at a leisurely pace.
T7. An antisocial neighbour, whether the tenant of a private landlord, a social landlord or a public landlord, can not only make their neighbours’ lives a misery but destroy a whole estate. On that basis, rather than reducing the role of communities through local councils, why does not the Government give them real powers to ensure that they can deal with antisocial neighbours? Instead of calling it “getting rid of red tape”, we could talk about doing something positive.
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That is why we are proposing to criminalise certain types of antisocial behaviour and ensuring that previous offences can be taken into account. For example, if someone engaged in antisocial behaviour in someone else’s community during the riots, that should clearly count against them when it came to their own housing situation.