RESIDENTS will be encouraged to report anti-social behaviour through an anonymous questionnaire designed by the town council in partnership with an Andover charity. 

Andover Town Council and Yellow Brick Road Projects are working together to create a 'multi-faceted' questionnaire to help people in the town report anti-social behaviour. 

The questionnaire is aimed to serve as an anonymous tool for people to report incidents of anti-social behaviour and similar incidents without having to report the matter to Test Valley Borough Council or the police.

It is due to be written with help from Yellow Brick Road Projects to help tailor questions to a younger audience, without inciting anxiety and to engage the youth to receive accurate information on anti-social behaviour.

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Yellow Brick Road Projects works with young people aged 35 and under both locally and nationally.

During a meeting of Andover Town Council on Wednesday, October 18, councillors discussed the pros and cons of setting up the questionnaire.

Cllr Katherine Bird said: "Fundamentally we have the option of setting up a questionnaire or not setting up a questionnaire. There are three possible outcomes - either no one uses it, we get an overwhelming amount of information, or we get a load of false responses.

"As long as the questions are worded appropriately and posed so as not to raise alarm, it doesn't seem as though there is a downside to doing this."

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Cllr Stu Waue raised concern that the council would be duplicating what is already being done by other organisations, adding: "Police have reports, Test Valley Borough Council also have an anti-social behaviour team with a facility for reporting. 

"There is the potential we could speak to them and ask for an anonymous facility to be added to that, which would be a relatively minor change to something they already do, and also means we are not diluting information by having information in multiple places."

Cllr Jason Sangster said: "I think the cost for what we want to do would be minimal and we're trying a different tactic to the police and the borough council, and hopefully that will give us different results. It's worth a trial period to see what kind of results we get.

"This is also about community engagement and the potential that this could be a solution to existing issues. We can't make informed decisions without good information and the more information we have the better. I think it's a good idea."

The decision to design the questionnaire was approved.