Page 38 - Eildon Housing Association Limited

If you contact the police, make sure you ask for an incident number, as this can be used as evidence in court.
Multi-agency approach
Eildon Housing Association works in partnership with other agencies to deal with neighbour nuisance and antisocial behaviour.
Our partners include environmental services, police, social work and mediation services, and the Safer Communities team at Scottish Borders Council.
In some cases, these agencies have more powers to deal with a problem, or can take action more quickly.
Legal action
When all non-legal solutions have been tried or ruled out, a number of legal options can be considered. These include:
Statutory nuisance
Environmental Services has statutory powers to deal with and enforce action against anti-social behaviour such as noise and refuse.
Antisocial behaviour orders (ASBO)
Local authorities and police have powers to deal with persistent nuisance, harassment and criminal behaviour. The breaching of an ASBO is a criminal offence.
Short Scottish secure tenancies
If a tenant of Eildon Housing Association becomes the subject
of an ASBO, then we are entitled to serve a notice on the tenant, converting the Scottish secure tenancy into a short Scottish secure tenancy (SSST). This means that for a period of 12 months, we are able, at any point, to seek repossession of the property.
Grounds for eviction
If a tenant causes serious antisocial behaviour, and persistent and repeated nuisance, or deliberately ignores official warnings about breaking tenancy conditions, we will ask the court to grant a decree for eviction.
Before we can take legal action against someone, we need to have evidence that proves they have been a nuisance.
If we take legal action, it’s likely you will need to give evidence in court. Let us know if you are worried about giving evidence. In most cases, the sheriff will want to hear your version of events. Occasionally, there are circumstances where the housing officer is allowed to speak on your behalf.
Legal action can take months to go through the court process. You need
to keep on recording evidence, and reporting the problem in the meantime. We will keep in contact and give you all the help we can.
When the case goes to court, the sheriff will listen to all the evidence and then decide whether the tenant should be evicted or not. We need to satisfy the sheriff that we are acting reasonably in seeking to evict someone.
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