As part of a programme of regional visits, the Home Secretary saw how better co-operation between local authorities and other public agencies is helping to expose wider criminal activity. Better information sharing between agencies can expose television licence evasion, benefit and council tax fraud, and vehicle insurance dodging, highlighting wider criminal behaviour.
The Home Secretary announced that a new anti-social behaviour squad would soon visit the region to work with local ASB experts to tackle offending and ensure police and local agencies make full use of the powers available to them.
Persistent offenders make up seven per cent of all trouble makers who cause the majority of crime and disorder. Local agencies now have additional tools and powers to deal with anti-social behaviour.
Latest figures available show that local agencies across the country used the tools and powers available to tackle anti-social behaviour more than 16,000 times between April and June 2008. In Yorkshire and the Humber, there were 1,481 tools and powers used.
