NEARLY one in five people have considered moving due to anti-social behaviour (ASB), research from YouGov has shown.

It comes as Devon & Cornwall Police supports ASB Awareness Week 2025, a national campaign led by Resolve, the UK’s leading organisation on community safety.

The research, commissioned by Resolve, found that nearly one in five people have considered moving home due to ASB, with one in ten actually moving.

Despite this, over half of those who experienced or witnessed ASB did not report it.

ASB Awareness Week 2025 highlights the impact that ASB has on victims and communities, raises awareness of the support available to victims, and promotes partnership working, bringing together councils, housing associations, police, charities, youth organisations and community groups, reflective of the fact that everyone has a role in tackling ASB.

Assistant Chief Constable Glen Mayhew QPM said: ‘Devon & Cornwall Police recognises the disruption and even fear that ASB can bring to communities, and we have taken a partnership-based approach to tackling this to make people feel safer.

‘We work with Community Safety Partnerships, housing authorities and other agencies and focus our activity through our Neighbourhood Teams who have the best understanding of their communities and where the most troublesome areas are that we can concentrate our activities on.

‘Visible policing in “Hot Spot” areas of ASB helps to stop ASB escalating and gains the trust of our communities.

‘Everyone deserves to feel safe in their home and their neighbourhood, and the public are our strongest partners in this.

‘If ASB is blighting your community, please report it’.

Neighbourhood policing teams have a number of tools that they can use to tackle ASB.

These include Community Protection Warnings, Community Protection Notices, Criminal Behaviour Orders, Civil Injunctions, Closure Orders, Public Spaces Protection Orders and Dispersal powers.

‘We are listening to our communities and we do our best to act on intelligence received’ ACC Mayhew added.