Domestic Violence and the Property Manager

At a recent IRPM Seminar, Gudrun Burnett of the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA), told the audience, that around two women a week are murdered in domestic abuse cases in the UK.  There remains a staggering number of domestic abuse cases that go unreported within our communities and DAHA aim to highlight actions that housing professionals can take to encourage them to report incidents and to make available helpline numbers and take sensible preventative actions.

Some of these include simple things like including helpline numbers on noticeboards, talking to the people reporting regular neighbour noise issues and separating nuisance noise from genuine issues involving violence, coercion and bullying in the home. Community engagement is key to dealing with this issue, an issue that remains largely hidden because of our reluctance to report it or to get involved. However, early intervention can be a genuine lifesaver for someone.

Instead of demonising noisy neighbours, sometimes it is essential that we look beyond the disturbance and take more responsible actions to understand the underlying causes and deal with them. Creating communities is increasingly cited as a part of developers and the property managers ambition - good communities will look out for each other, set standards and deal with bad behaviours. This is a virtuous circle that we should all be encouraging.

 

Nationwide Domestic Abuse Helpline:  0808 2000 247 (Freephone)

DAHA: https://www.dahalliance.org.uk/

 Guidance leaflet here:  https://www.irpm.org.uk/docs/members/1ea3638b8c0b0a42284da2aff0562d3e7c0d241.pdf