Professional witnesses are a solution for:
a) People who are too scared or intimidated to give evidence themselves
b) People who are prepared to give evidence but need an independent opinion (especially in neighbour disputes where it is one person’s word against another)
Hopefully, if you can develop a good relationship with the relevant agency (eg. Local Authority, Police), you can together work out a way in which they can be present to witness the anti-social behaviour. With limited resources due to government cuts, however, this may be impractical. Alternatively you could ask a family member, friend or neighbour to come when the anti-social behaviour is occurring and become a witness.
If family, friends or neighbours are not able to witness the anti-social behaviour, they can still give evidence on your behalf as can the agencies helping you in the case (in legal jargon, this is called hearsay).
If you want to remain anonymous, you can pay a professional witness to come and see what is happening and then give evidence about it. The huge advantage of this is that someone who doesn’t live locally can be the one to give evidence which means that neither you nor anyone in your local community will become a target of intimidation or harassment as a result of reporting the anti-social behaviour.
We recommend the Professional Witnesses Group (www.pwg.uk.com) who can help nationwide by coming and witnessing the problem and giving evidence in court about it.