Social landlords are spending more than £50 a year per property tackling anti-social behaviour, a study has found.

Housemark’s benchmarking report has found the average cost is £53 per home, but that organisations that spend more do not always tackle the problem more effectively. The sum is around half that spent on rent recovery.

The lowest spending group of landlords spend around £35 a property. In London, landlords spend double this, but record fewer cases of anti-social behaviour.

The report states the ‘correlation between costs and other measures is weak’.

Among organisations achieving more than 90 per cent satisfaction for case handling, for example, one provider spent £24.19 per property, while another spent £108.56.

Noise continues to be the most common form of anti-social behaviour, followed by harassment.

The most effective way of dealing with anti-social behaviour was early intervention, which resolved 76 per cent of cases in 2009/10.

Overall the time taken to resolve cases fell slightly, from 68 days in 2008/09 to 65 in 2009/10.

John Wickenden, knowledge manager at Housemark and author of the report, said: ‘In the current economic climate it is more important than ever for landlords to show that their services offer value for money.’

Download a copy of the Housemark anti-social behaviour report.