Keep calm and carry on

We've been talking recently to other estate management colleagues about anti-social behaviour. It was also interesting to speak on this subject with friends in other service professions, including in professional services such as lawyers and accountants. It seems, disturbingly, that anti-social behaviour has markedly increased in recent years.

It's almost invariably assumed, in the world of residential property and housing estate management, that anti-social behavious means petty vandalism, grafitti in the lifts, or kids (always kids that get the blame!) larking about yelling and causing a nuisance of themselves late into the night, often making residents feel intimidated. Extreme antisocial behaviour is, of course, intimidating and often slips into the realm of crime. It is a real problem in many housing estates, both in the private and the public sectors. It is also often caused by persons not resident in a particular housing estate but that have chosen to gather in that place.

I'm not going to go into a long treatise about anti-social behaviour on residential estates - there are many books, seminars, courses, scholarly articles and other lengthy documents written by experts in the field already. Our perspective at Advanced Property Care is that a) it exists, b) good estate management that is present on an estate can help to mitigate the effects of this, c) a strong sense of community within the estate can help prevent the worst of it and d) it is a complex, mulit-faceted social problem that usually needs a well-coordinated and properly funded multi-agency approach by local authorities and government.

What I am going to touch on is the anti-social behaviour frequently perpertrated on service providers by their clients - residents of the estate, visitors and even, on rare occasions, the client management company boards. This usually takes the form of utter, uninhibited rudeness when making a call, or even in writing an email or letter. The unrealistc demands that are sometimes posed by clients who are not always ready to back up those demands with appropriate remuneration, are a form of intimidation and anti-social behaviour. Screaming down the phone at an estate manager for having had the temerity to send out a service charge account statement that shows a missed payment, is a form of anti-social behaviour. Offensive and derogatory social media posts about the technicians that are trying to get the estate's lift to work when residents have overburdened it with heavy construction materials for the refurbishment of their apartments is anti-social behavour.

This form of anti-social behaviour causes stess, untold anxiety and a sense of being intimidated, evean attacked. These are the same emotions as are experienced when walking through a dark area in a notorious housing estate or through a gang of hoodie-wearing figures. If this level of anti-social behaviour is practised by those who consider themselves 'clients' or 'adults' or 'proper citizens' it is hardly surprising that the same sense of entitlement and disregard for propriety, courtesy and property is put into practice in other ways by younger generations.

There is no need for this. Owning an apartment in a lovely block of flats in a 'nice' area is an achievement in life, but not one that puts you a cut above any other human being. Entitlement doesn't come through the cars you own or the air you breathe or the money you earn, but through the way that you treat others.

For our teams and, I would say, given those conversations I referred to at the start of this piece, for most of us providing professional services it is usually the case that we take it all with a pinch of salt, keep calm and carry on with our work to provide a service to even those anti-social clients. But we would be well within our rights to refuse to do so. For us, respect for others and for ourselves is one of the most important values that underpins what we do. It is through respect for our clients that we do our best, every day, and if our best turns out not to be good enough, we try harder. And we expect the same level of respect in return.

If, as humans, we all supported each other in exercising and demonstrating mutual respect, then perhaps anti-social behaviour would be on the decline rather than on the rise.

It takes mutual respect to foster a community and avoid anti-social behaviour