During 2016/17, the service received almost 10,000 enquiries - resolving 99.96% of these - an improvement on the previous year’s performance.

The team delivers both proactive and reactive responses to tackle anti-social behaviour, with an out-of-hours team and mediation service. Feedback continues to be positive with satisfaction levels from users of the service increasing from 93% to 94%.

Mediation is an important aspect of the service and tackles lower level neighbour disputes. Last year the mediation service received 360 referrals and delivered a 94% success rate for those who participated in the mediation process.

Neighbour mediation works to resolve issues with individual neighbours or groups of neighbours in dispute. It can help by opening up a line of communication between neighbours within a safe environment and is done with the assistance of a trained mediator. It’s appropriate for people wanting to talk over and resolve issues. Examples of some of the cases tackled include, noise nuisance from loud music or televisions, inconsiderate parking, dog barking/fouling and excessive family living noise.

An out-of-hours team is also in place working evenings and weekends, dealing with calls of ongoing anti-social behaviour. The team has carried out over 1,500 visits to homes in response to enquiries about persistent anti-social behaviour. And following on from these, over 57% of the addresses were not subject to any further reports of anti-social behaviour, and the majority of cases were resolved in just two visits.

Still the most common contact from North Lanarkshire’s residents is noise related. In addition, there has been a rise in the number of people enquiring about estate issues and the team has increased the number of estate visits taking place to identify, and resolve issues at an earlier stage.

From the contacts received, over 1,500 cited criminality and were referred to the police; over 100 related to non-domestic noise and passed on to the council’s environmental team for investigation, while almost 500 were anonymous.

Operations manager Stephen Llewellyn said: “Our anti-social response service is wide-ranging and is proving, year on year, to be extremely effective in tackling both anti-social behaviour when it happens and resolving low level issues with mediation before they escalate. We believe the success of our service is down to dealing with issues at as early a stage as possible.

“Our fully trained staff are committed to reducing the impact of anti-social behaviour on our residents and local communities by following up incidents, and working round the clock to improve the quality of lives for the people of North Lanarkshire.”