The Neighbourhood Helpline Closure FAQs

The Neighbourhood Helpline will close on August 7th. 

Any complaints received before August 7th will be handled in accordance with current Helpline processes. After August 7th, complaints must be raised with the relevant Leeds City Council service. 

Issues within the community should be raised via Leeds City Council, who can take immediate action on the issue and will then inform the universities. If you are experiencing an issue with anti-social behaviour or noise nuisance from domestic properties, you should contact the Leeds City Council Anti-Social Behaviour Team:  

• During office hours (9am - 5pm, Monday to Friday) - call 0113 222 4402   
• Outside of office hours (5pm - 3:30am seven days a week) - call 0113 376 0337   

You can report issues relating to waste here:  

• https://www.leeds.gov.uk/antisocial-behaviour-and-crime   

Through a data sharing agreement with Leeds City Council, universities will be given access to the details of relevant complaints in order to identify where our students were involved. This information will be accessed regularly so that complaints can be picked up and action taken quickly to prevent issues becoming a recurring problem.   

Due to data protection, Leeds City Council will not know if a complaint relates to individuals studying at a particular institution and so will not be able to inform you of action taken by universities. All complaints that have met the threshold to be a statutory nuisance will be shared with the universities so that appropriate action can be taken.  

If students are found to be involved in an incident, the relevant university will act in accordance with their own behaviour and disciplinary procedure. Due to differing data protection processes not all universities can provide an update to the complainant on disciplinary actions taken, however the University of Leeds will contact residents whose complaints involve our students to inform them of the outcome, as long as they have given consent for the council to share their details. 

The University of Leeds and Leeds Beckett University jointly fund the Dedicated Noise Service with legal powers to attend complaints and take action when an offence has been committed. The universities receive the details of every student who has committed an offence and take action according to their own disciplinary procedures. Due to differing data protection processes not all universities can provide an update to the complainant on disciplinary actions taken. Universities are not able to share actions for other partnering institutions. 

When you report your incident to the council you should be asked to provide contact information. If you give your consent for your details to be shared with the universities, then they will be passed on. Consent will need to be given for the universities to provide feedback on our actions in relation to complaints. 

Leeds City Council can only share the details of complaints that have reached a threshold to be a statutory nuisance, where the universities will take disciplinary action. We will however, continue to give guidance to students who may cause neighbourhood issues which have not met the threshold. For example, an information letter that can be passed on by the dedicated service response officers, to help students better understand their responsibilities and provide advice for avoiding noise nuisance, as well as understanding the consequences of nuisance behaviour. 

Early interventions work, with the majority of households never attracting a second complaint. This has continued with the Dedicated Noise Service. We work with the council to make sure that communications activity, including the letters given to households, community engagement events and even the vehicles used by the dedicated service response officers itself – carry the branding and endorsement from the universities so that students understand that community offences will lead to disciplinary action from their higher education institution. We will also continue with our considerable year-round engagement campaigns which support positive student citizenship and prevent nuisance behaviour occurring.  

Each university has independently developed disciplinary procedures which outline how they will respond to students being involved in issues in the community. The universities are reviewing these disciplinary procedures ahead of the helpline withdrawal to ensure that the most appropriate and effective action is taken for complaints raised through Leeds City Council.  

As the universities will receive only casework information for issues that have reached the threshold for statutory nuisance, therefore, the University of Leeds disciplinary action will involve referring students for citizenship training or to attend a disciplinary hearing or committee. 

The Dedicated Noise Service is a unique service tackling anti-social behaviour and noise in Headingley, Hyde Park, Little Woodhouse and Burley. The dedicated service is a national first, with Leeds Beckett University and University of Leeds funding overnight patrols, seven days a week, by council response officers. The officers work exclusively on noise and anti-social behaviour issues in inner north-west Leeds. They carry out patrols to identify and stop potential issues from escalating.