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Antisocial Behaviour

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. One of the barriers to that is that the housing associations do not have specific resources and rely on those provided by other agencies. That is one of my arguments for how valuable ISOs are, because they mean that the other agencies have to provide the resources to support good projects such as those that he mentioned. Ring-fenced money nationally would have made that simpler, in the absence of ring-fenced money locally. I understand the arguments about local flexibility, but I am not very sympathetic when local flexibility creates a barrier to the implementation of excellent policies such as ISOs. In each area of the country, there is a minority of young people who are the cause of most of the problems for themselves and others. Significant improvements could be brought about by changing the behaviour of that small number. That is where properly funded ISOs could play a far greater role. The impact of antisocial behaviour should not be underestimated. I receive many complaints from constituents, and only yesterday received an e-mail that said:"““How sad is it that our twins now ask us on a regular basis if ‘the yobs’ came last night. In actual fact they know that they have been on many occasions due to the large amount of beer bottles and cans that they see littering the area in a morning and are on some occasions woken up by the noise from the gangs of youths.""I know I speak on behalf of all the local residents when I say that we approach the Summer months with some considerable degree of trepidation (although the issues are by no means confined to the Summer months), knowing that to some degree or other we are going to experience this anti-social behaviour.""Our quality of life has been significantly eroded by what we are experiencing.””"