Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department plans to take to tackle persistent (a) antisocial behaviour and (b) drug dealing in residential areas.

Tackling anti-social behaviour is a top priority for this Government, and a key part of our Safer Streets Mission to take back our streets.

​We will put thousands of neighbourhood police and community support officers into local communities so that residents have a named officer they can turn to when things go wrong.

We will crack down on those causing havoc on our high streets by introducing tougher powers via a Crime and Policing Bill, including a new Respect Order to tackle repeat offending.The Home Office is providing £66.3m funding this financial year (2024/25) to police forces in England and Wales for hotspot policing to tackle anti-social behaviour and serious violence. The Metropolitan Police have been allocated £8,139,508 of this funding.

We know that drugs drive crime and cause harm to individuals and society. We will take action as part of our Safer Streets Mission to drive down crime and anti-social behaviour across the country, drawing on evidence for what works in identifying drug users and intervening effectively to change patterns of behaviour including, where appropriate, treatment and recovery services for those dependent on drugs. For instance, we will consider learning from Project ADDER (Addiction, Diversion, Disruption, Enforcement, Recovery), a programme that is testing a whole-system response to combatting drug-related harms in 13 areas across England and Wales, including through increased police activity to tackle visible street-level dealing and trialling new approaches to address persistent offending.