Improving perceptions and confidence

Tackling perceptions of anti-social behaviour is as important as tackling actual incidents and it is very important that members of the public have confidence in agencies' abilities to tackle anti-social behaviour.

Previous measures of perception showed an improvement; the results of Wirral’s Citizen’s Panel saw a 16.5% improvement in perceptions around youth disorder from January 2005 to January 2007.

The Place Based Survey (2008) provided information on people’s perceptions of their local area and the local services they receive.

National Indicator 17 was measured through this survey, which was concerned with the percentage of the public who felt that ASB is a problem in their area. The results, released in June 2009, showed Wirral’s perception percentage at 18.7%; this meant that 18.7% of those people surveyed considered ASB to be a problem in their area. Wirral’s performance is better in this perception indicator than the averages for other Merseyside CSPs, Metropolitan areas, North-West region and England respectively.