Resisting top-down power dynamics

The Government’s rebranding of ASB powers under the new Act included the streamlining of the existing ‘bloated’ powers toolkit (Home Office, 2012). Much of this was focused towards supporting the community, with a clear victim focus. Another objective, which the riot clause directly undermined, was the attempt to make powers tenure neutral. The riot clause actually offered very little additional powers to providers, hence Shelter’s concern in response to the consultation that highlighting housing was merely a symbolic gesture. Almost all practitioners, particular housing officers, were unenthusiastic about the new powers because they were either unhelpful or in opposition to the role that housing officers perceived themselves as having. This represents an emerging ‘subversion’ of policy in what Prior and Barnes (2011) describe as ‘agencies of resistance’:

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Such agencies of resistance denote an engagement by service providers and/or users in the production of strategies for dealing with the contingency of service delivery contexts that constitute modifications or alternative to, or rejections of, the intended processes or outcomes of policy delivery. (Prior & Barnes, 2011, p. 269)

Prior and Barnes’ exploration into the resistance of policy by service providers demonstrates that resistance can take different forms depending upon the context; service providers can resist particular strategies and practices that do not conform to the priorities set down in official policy (see Prior, 2009).

Changes to housing policy: Anger or ambivalence amongst practitioners?

The riot clause was amended from a statutory power, as originally suggested in the Government’s 2011 consultation, to a discretionary power. This therefore gives housing providers autonomy over whether they choose to use this power in the event of a future outbreak of urban disorder. It is the aim of this section to address the question: why would social housing providers want to resist increased powers of possession? Research participants were asked to consider what action they, or their organisations, may advocate in the outbreak of any future disorders, reflecting upon the 2011 riots and largely assuming any future disorder followed a broadly similar pattern of behaviours. Following analysis of the data, two distinct types of resistance emerged; defined as pragmatic resistance and ethical resistance in this study as categories to analyse the different rationales and motivations practitioners cited for resisting the extended powers of possession.

Pragmatic resistance can be understood here as the inability, or the unwillingness, to evict tenants based on the existing powers and tools available to housing providers. Housing providers stressed the importance of locality (a point that spans both pragmatic and ethical resistance), because officers knew that, once a case was presented in court, unless there were other substantiating reasons for serving the tenant with eviction, other than solely being involved in the riots, it would be unlikely to succeed:

When the riots came up…there was a big…discussion between the council and police and all that on the expectation of who should be seen to be doing what. And then obviously we have the Government, or the media saying this should be done… to stop rioters, take effect on their tenancies and all that kind of thing. What was not taken into account was that… the issue being was when we had the council and like saying look, you should deal with these tenants… at the end of the day, it’s not affected our tenancy management and this is where the sticking point was… in respect of us taking action against tenants. Because what happened, I mean this could have happened down in London, or in the city [Manchester], if it’s not affecting our tenancy management, then if we weren’t going to take an anti-social behaviour order, or possession, would that be deemed to be reasonable? And that was the biggest issue in respect of those, when it comes to the riots. We were asked, there was some people identified as being involved in it, however… due to [them] not affecting our tenancy management, they’re not, a lot of these were not even in, not even caused problems before at all…we were limited on what action we could [take]. (ASB Officer, RSL, Greater Manchester)

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Using the riots to pursue eviction was also perceived as an expensive option for housing providers, especially in light of Wandsworth Council’s decision to reverse their pursuit to evict the mother of a rioter, where it was clear that authorities lacked confidence that the court would award possession. Additionally, housing providers already had the ability to serve a NOSP and evict a tenant with existing powers, should an incident of rioting have affected their tenancy agreement, which was also a factor in practitioners’ ambivalence towards the new powers. Related to this is the idea of proportionality. Where a ground is discretionary there has to be a twofold test. This would mean that the judge would look at whether the incident had actually happened and then whether it was necessary and proportionate to grant the order. This latter point can be challenging for a housing provider to prove, and would be potentially blocked on grounds of human rights, for example (ASB Officer, West Midlands). A more generic understanding of proportionality is whether a practitioner would consider an offence or type of behaviour committed to be worth pursuing to the point of serving a NOSP or some other form of sanction on the individual or their families. In the context of the riots, when considering the use of eviction for rioters, there were some instances where practitioners probably would not even consider the use of eviction:

…it’s all around proportionality, you know, before it even goes to court. The police and other departments will be having that discussion around… yes, we’ve got this power, [but] is it proportionate? If you look at some of the examples where they’ve stole, you know, penny sweets in some cases, or really low-value stuff, have they just got carried away? They weren’t the ones that smashed the windows, [they just] got carried away and [have] gone in… which is still your criminal offence and contribution to the riots overall, but really, do they deserve to lose their home for that? (Police Officer, Greater Manchester)

This officer, echoing the sentiment of many research participants, explained that in spite of any national response or political pressure, the local practitioners involved in making the decisions for crime and ASB procedures – and involved in responding to events such as the 2011 riots – would discuss the best options they perceived in the local context and on a case- by-case basis. He, therefore, suggested that he would not envisage many cases of eviction to be brought against rioters – especially those who had only committed very minor offences – in the event of any future urban disorder.

Finally, the third reason for pragmatic resistance was a lack of evidence. With no evidence able to specifically show that social housing tenants were a prominent demographic element of the 2011 riots, and therefore not necessarily needing to be “taught a lesson”, as suggested by national discourse, research participants talked about organisations waiting to see how the larger organisations - with more funding to pursue such legal challenges - were going to react:

I am not that keen, for many of my landlord clients, to be the pioneers of using these new injunctions, because they’re going to have to fund the Court of Appeal cases if they do, [pause] I’d let London and Quadrant do it, they’ve got tons of money (Legal Representative, London)

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Once it was clear, especially following the Wandsworth Council case being quashed, that there was not going to be social housing tenants evicted en masse, the issue soon subsided:

I… certainly don’t think Wandsworth managed to evict anyone. I think they backed down after the Ms de la Calva one. I’m not actually aware of any local authority that managed it… I think Wandsworth took the lead and when they couldn’t get it through, one else did… so nothing’s happened…since. (Legal Practitioner, London)

Ethical resistance can be considered distinct to pragmatic resistance, and demonstrates how the complex issues of housing and ASB management can differ between individual officers and housing providers. Practitioners talked about their role within an organisation, the responsibility they are duty bound to offer their tenants and communities as well as maintaining the inclusivity ethos of social housing management. Ethical resistance, therefore, is used here and interpreted as the housing provider not wanting to evict tenants, as opposed to pragmatic resistance being where they could not evict tenants. Of course, as with any aspect of this research, views sometimes conflicted and participants disagreed. This was most notable when considering whether eviction should be used more or less in cases of urban disorder, but also ASB more generally, and over the role of eviction itself. Both of these issues are covered later in the chapter. However, there was a clear pattern - amongst the housing officers most notably, where they viewed their role as part of a support network for their tenants and communities. This was conveyed by housing officers as their responsibility for inclusivity; which for a number of participants went against the idea of evicting tenants, especially in the context of the 2011 riots, which was the main offence these new extended powers focused upon:

Some of our more…intolerant…community members…those who only see things in very black and white terms…‘well, just evict them’… [But] we are a social landlord, we are socially responsible and even though…we are a team of officers who are enforcing…legislation and enforcing…tenancy agreements, we’re not in it because we want to go around evicting people. We would only do that as a very last resort, because we are supposed to be…a provider that’s supposed to be looking to socially include people, not socially exclude people…I would be very, very surprised, once the absolute grounds come in on the 20 October, I would be very, very, very surprised if you saw a sudden increase in social landlords wanting to use that particular piece of legislation. (Neighbourhood Safety, Greater Manchester)

This reveals how landlords were taking a considered approach to their responses; arguably unlike the national responses which were labelled as “playing to the galleries” (Housing Officer, East London) and as a knee-jerk reaction to the disorders by research participants because of the immediacy of the extended powers being posited and lack of evidence supporting the particular policy amendments. As cited elsewhere, one legal practitioner explained that she had never seen legislative amendments suggested so quickly and that within the time between the disorders and the changes to the policy consultation there was insufficient time to understand whether the suggested changes were addressing the issues concerned.

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The focus on how social housing providers should respond following the riots also ignored the work that was being done not only during the riots but also in the time before the riots. Many participants talked about their wider and ongoing involvement in local activities and place-making. Whilst this did vary between organisations, some of which had very dispersed stock and therefore a less prominent presence in the community than some other organisations, there was still a sense of being able to identify and connect with tenants. In the case of the 2011 riots, much of this focus was on the relationship between housing providers and younger populations, those who would be typically the children of tenants rather than the tenants themselves. Through on-going work with local residents and other agencies, housing providers talked about the historical relationships with their tenants and their ability to identify “at risk” groups. Programmes such as FIPs had enabled practitioners to know their tenants’ households, including those who may have been most likely to be lured, either through peer pressure or curiosity, to sites of rioting:

The other thing we’ve got is our Family Intervention Project. So, again, what we were able to do was – the young people that were most at risk of falling into involvement, we already knew them…and a lot of them, we were already engaging with them and working with them and we were able to call them, call mum and dad, call the guardians, whoever was responsible for them and say, “where are they? What are they doing?” We opened our youth facilities as well, [which] lots of people didn’t. I think [others] thought it was too risky. (Housing Manager, East London)

Awareness of the groups of young people, who may have been most inclined to travel to riot areas, meant that housing providers could ensure that youth facilities were opened and that local practitioners who knew the individuals could encourage them to go there instead and explain to them about the potential consequences of becoming involved in the riots. The participant quoted above also explained how in their area they used CCTV and capitalised on their close links with the police to monitor the situation. When they saw small groups forming, they asked for the police to informally approach these groups, check what was happening, let them know that facilities were open and to outline some of the consequences they may face should they become involved in any of the wider disturbances taking place. This participant was particularly keen to emphasise the importance of preventing people from becoming involved, rather than simply relying on punishment at the point an offence had been committed, showing a desire to take a non-punitive stance where possible. It was cited on a number of occasions that some individuals perceived the carnivalesque appearance of the riots as exciting and, unlike what the national rhetoric suggested, some individuals would not have been aware of the punitive sanctions they were going to face for being involved in the disorders. It was also noted by certain practitioners that holistic approaches to their work meant that they had been engaging with their young populations to help with education, training and employment, which was cited as another reason for their tenants not being involved as they had too much to lose. There is a clear parallel to some of the earlier debates

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around the structural factors affecting individuals’ involvement in the disorder and how important in can be for individuals to feel as though they have a ‘stake’ in society.

The prioritisation of longer term work to help support people maintain their tenancies and cope with particular situations, including finding training and work and offering safe environments for people to socialise in, were some of the key mechanisms that housing providers considered as helping prevent people from becoming involved in urban disorder. The resistance towards the use of a “riot clause” to widen the powers of possession to housing providers demonstrated the non-punitive stance of many housing providers prefer to take.

An extension of this concern from practitioners was that whilst young people may not have necessarily been aware of the custodial sentences they could face, and the implications this could have on their future life courses, the use of housing tenancies as a sanction was a collective punishment for the entire family. So even though it was a child of a tenancy holder who had been involved in a disorder, their parent/s and siblings could also lose their home, which will inevitably have implications on their life chances too.

The issue of locality, a key aspect of the riot clause, also had ethical resonance when research participants talked about resisting national policies. For many practitioners, they were clear that if someone had committed an offence as part of the riots outside of the locality, they would have already faced criminal charges. Practitioners therefore felt it unnecessary to pursue civil enforcement alongside the criminal charges already being brought. Often where tenants were identified as rioters – which was not considered a significant number from the experience of research participants in this study – they had not had a previous record of ASB or criminality. Therefore, there was no justification to then subject them to the double- jeopardy punishment of eviction in addition to criminal charges:

I actually don’t think the ground itself, because it’s still a discretionary ground, I don’t think it’s going to make any difference… Because, my experience was… it is all in context and it is all to do with, you know, whether or not it is reasonable in the bigger picture. So actually, the amendment itself, I don’t think -- maybe had they made it a mandatory ground… then you have to show proportionality, but then I think you would have been dealing with, or may end up dealing with a whole raft of human rights-based challenges… you know, article eight, right to a home. Those cases very rarely succeed on the tenant’s part, but I can’t think of a case that might be more clear cut than, you know, a nineteen year old boy, rioting in Manchester, when he lives in London… his parents are great tenants, lovely people [laughs], no problems…younger siblings in the home… the fact that he… overcomes the first limb, even on proportionality, even if it was a mandatory ground, you still have to demonstrate that it’s proportionate… I think that’s where the block is. (Legal Representative, London)

However, not all practitioners necessarily agreed with this view. There were a number of instances where practitioners’ narratives aligned more closely with the Government’s rhetoric around a lack of morality or respect. What became more evident was that participants’ own internalised views of the riots conflicted as they switched between their personal views of the

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disorder and the way they were able to respond within their professional capacity. It is this inter- and intra-personal conflict that is explored in the final subsection of this chapter.