Delay to civil injunctions for anti-social behaviour until legal aid changes made

The introduction of civil injunctions for anti-social behaviour has been delayed until at least January while the Home Office makes changes to the legal aid system.

It said Part 1 of the Anti-Social Crime and Policing Act 2014, which deals with the injunctions, would be delayed “probably until January 2015”.

This would allow “unavoidable and necessary changes to be made to the civil legal aid system to ensure that applications for advocacy assistance can be assessed for those involved in civil injunction hearings”.

To do this it must amend the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, after which a new start date for the injunctions would be announced.

In the interim, anti-social behaviour orders (ASBO) on application will remain available, and for social landlords anti-social behaviour housing injunctions would stay in use.

Parts 2-6 of the Act will come into force on 20 October as planned.  

There will though be a delay to the introduction of a power to allow councils to designate social landlords as holding powers to issue community protection notices and fixed penalty notices for anti-social behaviour.

The Home Office said this was to allow time for the new powers to bed in and for councils “to make an informed choice on whether to designate, [landlords]”.

Meanwhile, new government statistics have shown a small increase in the use of ASBOs in 2013, though still far from their 2005 peak.

Since ASBOs became available on 1 April 1999 there had by 31 December 2013 been 24,427 issued.

There were 1,349 issued last year, a small increase on the 1,329 seen the previous year.

The highest number of ASBOs issued in any year was 4,122 in 2005.

Over the whole period, 36% of ASBOs were issued to juveniles and the remainder to adults and, since gender figures became available from 1 June 2000, there were 20,836 issued to males and 3,487 to females.

Of the 24,323 ASBOs issued between 1 June 2000 to 31 December 2013, there were breaches at least once of 58% of them, equivalent to 14,157, and of those 75% were breached more than once, equivalent to 10,651.

Courts imposed immediate custodial sentences in 7,503 cases of breaches, and 3,200 community sentences.

Mark Smulian