Social Housing, Antisocial Behaviour and Risk: The Challenges of UK Disability Equality Law

by Leigh Roberts

Overview

The recommendations for policy are reform of equalities legislation, better support for individual perpetrators and measures to improve relations between social landlords and medico-welfare agencies involved in ASB control. This book presents an analysis of relevant developments in antisocial behaviour (ASB), social housing and disability equality law and policy. Using an empirical study of social landlord organisations, which includes detailed analysis of case files, a review of their policies, as well as focus groups and interviews with managers and officers, it shows how housing professionals operate in this framework. This analysis provides an in-depth account of how housing professionals make medical, moral and risk-based judgements and assessments of perpetrators they know or suspect to have mental health or learning difficulties. It explains how these factors inform the process of managing complaints about ASB arguing that they lead to different outcomes for occupants of social housing. The importance of the book relates to housing officers’ constructions of disability and their potentially discriminatory consequences: officers’ minimal compliance with equality law or extraordinary treatment may correspondingly result in social exclusion or inclusion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399540360
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	06/30/2025
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Leigh Roberts is a Legal Advisor and was awarded a PhD in Law from the University of York in 2020.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction and Conceptual Overview

1. Social Housing, Disability and ASB

2. ASB Governance and the Legal Framework: Rights at the Margins of Society

3. ASB Governance and Knowledge: Evidence and the Social Construction of Disability in the Context of ASB

4. ASB Governance and Disability as a Moral Issue: The Moral Filter

5. Risk Management in ASB Governance

6. ASB Governance, Accountability and the Management of Risk in Litigation

7. Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

Roberts' timely study rigorously examines the interface between disability and anti-social behaviour governance in English social housing and its legal, moral and risk dimensions. The book offers a powerful analysis of existing practices and a compelling argument for the importance of a social model and changes to equality legislation.

John Flint

With anti-social behaviour again high on the Government’s agenda this book is timely. It provides a unique insight into the legal framework and the practices of social housing officers. Its conclusion that ‘the combined effect of ASB and disability equality policy may marginalise already marginalised people’ needs to be heard.

Caroline Hunter