Alan Johnson will revive the crusade against antisocial behaviour after admitting that the Government has been “coasting” on the issue in past years.

The new Home Secretary said that too many people on housing estates felt ignored by the authorities and that their worries about yobbish behaviour were not taken seriously.

In his first interview since taking over the job, Mr Johnson told The Times that the degradation to people’s quality of life caused by bad behaviour was a big issue that the Government needed to tackle.

He also said that concern about jobs going to migrants in the economic downturn was making immigration a “particularly potent brew” and was fuelling support for the British National Party (BNP).

Mr Johnson said that people who were not fascists had voted for the BNP and that those who were concerned about immigration could not be dismissed as “right-wing nutters”. But he made clear that his focus was on tackling bad behaviour.

He said: “I want to ensure there is particular emphasis on antisocial behaviour. I think we have done an awful lot on that and we have kind of coasted a bit. The coasting has allowed some of our critics to suggest that [action against] antisocial behaviour has not achieved very much. Well it has.

“What I think we have done is rested on our laurels. We need a new drive on antisocial behaviour.”

His admission follows the sidelining of one of Tony Blair’s flagship policies after Gordon Brown split responsibility for the issue between the Home Office and the Department for Children, Schools and Families. The Home Secretary said that tackling antisocial behaviour had been a good idea that the Government had stopped talking about. As part of his initiative an antisocial behaviour action website will be started, to give the public contact details of who is responsible for tackling the problem locally.

In addition the public will be able to compare what their local authority is doing with action taken in other parts of the country. Leaflets will be provided with the same information for people who do not have access to the internet.

Mr Johnson said: “People will be able to see how many crack houses have been closed, how many antisocial behaviour orders have been issued and how many parenting orders have been issued.”

The Home Secretary said that the orders were one way for people plagued by bad behaviour to say enough was enough. He said that he had lived on big estates, having moved from the slums of Notting Hill in West London to the Britwell Estate in Slough, Berkshire, where he brought up three children. “The thing about those estates is you can feel ignored. In Slough in those days the feeling was that the police would go to a posh part of Maidenhead and fall over themselves to make sure people were happy but they didn’t care much about people on council estates. They just had to live with it. That has changed dramatically.”

Despite the changes, he said some people still felt trapped in their homes. “Sometimes it is very low-level stuff. It is a crowd of kids sitting on a wall outside your house and because the houses are very small and close together and because generally it is a summer’s evening and it is the only place to go, you feel as if you are under threat.”

Mr Johnson said that he wanted to encourage people to complain to the police and local councils about antisocial behaviour. People should not be made to feel they were a nuisance or that they were making the lives of officials and the police “harder” if they complained about bad behaviour.

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