When PSCO Tracy-Anne Beasley arrived at a quiet residential Bradford street, where a row about parking had arisen, she was expecting a minor neighbourly dispute.

After meeting with one party, who told her their neighbours were the “noisiest, roughest, rudest family you could ever meet”, she went to the home of the neighbours in question and found them “completely baffled at the reason I needed to speak to them”.

“When I explained the issue the neighbour had with the parking I could have peeled the lady from the ceiling,” says PSCO Beasley.

Furious that her neighbours had complained to police, the woman claimed they had made her family suffer for two years.

The PSCO ended up taking calls from both parties at least twice a week, complaining of everything from screws left on driveways causing punctured tyres and cars blocking each other in to cats digging up gardens and grating noise of children’s football boots walking up the path.

A referral was sent to Bradford’s Neighbourhood Resolution Panel (NRP) and four months later, following several missed appointments, the two sides finally met, following “tireless” work by the NRP.

“We set up a meeting in a local church hall. The volunteers came with their own kettle and biscuits and we waited for the two hostile families,” says PSCO Beasley.

When they arrived she left them in the room with the volunteers and before long there was swearing and shouting. One couple left in tears but were persuaded to return.

“They battled it out,” says the PCSO. “Around 45 minutes later the door opened. No shouting, no yelling – there was calm. We had resolve. One of the couples left then I heard the other couple talking: ‘But I didn’t realise the overgrown bush upset her so much, we’ll cut it back this weekend’.

“I walked into the room to find the volunteers packing up and putting the kettle back in its bag.”

Since then she hasn’t had a single phone call from the neighbours. “I walk past those two houses on my beat and smile when I see the non-obstructing cars and the over-hanging tree that no longer hangs,” she says. “I give a little smile and say a silent thank-you to the volunteers.”

The Neighbourhood Resolution Panel is an innovative community safety scheme which has seen nearly 100 neighbourhood disputes resolved over the past 12 months.

It tackles issues such as neighbour disputes, criminal damage, harassment, theft, hate incidents, assault and kerb crawling in communities where low level crime or anti-social has taken place.

Next week, Bradford Council’s Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee will be given an update of the panel’s progress over the last year. The report states that since the pioneering project was introduced in Bradford in May 2012, 94 referrals have been made, with 90 per cent of the victims taking part in the process satisfied with the outcome.

Feedback from those helped by the scheme is highlighted in the report. “I feel 100 per cent better,” says one client. “The facilitators were very nice and were fair throughout the meeting and did not judge.”

“I feel more comfortable and relaxed after going through this process,” says another. “Everything is resolved, and I am pleased with the result.”

Referrals are made by police and social housing organisations. In some cases the scheme brings criminals face-to-face with their victims, to agree, with the help of trained volunteers, on restorative action.

Of those offenders who have been through the process, 97 per cent have not gone on to re-offend. Resolving disputes this way reduces the number of cases going to court.

The programme, which has 60 volunteers overseeing the work, has been highlighted nationally as a model scheme. There have been several visits to Bradford from representatives of similar schemes across the UK keen to learn about the pioneering work.

Councillor Imran Hussain, deputy leader of Bradford Council and executive member for Safer and Stronger Communities, called it “the way forward in dealing with neighbourhood disputes” but stressed that there’s no room for complacency.

“We plan to get even better and we have funding in place to make this good work continue,” he said.

Bradford Community Safety Partnerships have agreed to continue to fund the project until September.