After part one, Mark Rowe concludes a two-part review of anti-social behaviour, and how first the Rishi Sunak and now the Sir Keir Starmer governments have acknowledged it and seek to tackle it, by looking at work in one town.
Under the Conservative Government, the Home Office ran the Safer Streets Fund, whose rounds of money increasingly got funnelled through (until the May 2024 PCC elections, mainly Tory) police and crime commissioners. For example Operation Dial is by Essex Police with funding through the Essex Police Fire and Crime Commissioner ‘to target ASB hotspot locations’, as a Basildon Borough Council report to its cabinet put it in July. Under contract, though funding is only in place until March 2025, Community Safety Wardens deploy in and around Basildon, usually between noon and 6pm, and sometimes into the evening. In other words, they are covering lunchtimes and after school. In the Essex town as elsewhere, groups of youths can be intimidating (including to some young people), as ‘local secondary schools frequent the town and bus station after school finishes’, according to the report. Children after school may bother shops, or even steal; the report singled out the ubiquitous bakery chain Greggs.
While the wardens do not have the police’s power of arrest, sometimes they have ‘escorted individuals back to return stolen items’, as the report put it. Bus and rail stations (where children have to pass, and maybe wait some time for transport homewards) being liminal, and warm and dry, are natural places for anyone to loiter with nowhere better to go. Each town has its specific similar places; where young people or rough sleepers congregate – in Basildon town centre, on the stairwell to High Pavement. As the report points out, that can be intimidating to staff as they leave work (especially in the dark of winter); hence the presence of wardens (if they are on duty that late) ‘provides some level of reassurance’. Also of an evening, wardens may patrol at the Youth Service Hub in the town centre – which does not cause trouble in itself; rather, as the report adds, youths may be outside. Wardens ‘move on those causing ASB’.
Short-term funding
Two things bedevil such work. First, the extreme and chronic short-term nature of the funding. Round five of the Safer Streets Fund allowed an ‘uplift’, meaning more hours of patrols, from April to September; however, no further. A separate lot of Department for Transport funding went to Essex for a trial deployment of Transport Safety Officers (TSOs) on public transport around the county, including Basildon; which does raise the question of who and how well all these projects are coordinated.
How to measure?
Second, how to measure ‘what works’, so as to spread best practice and spot poor practice to improve it, and to reward good patrollers and teams, and (you might hope) retain them? Is ‘moving on’ a useful metric, and is it a good thing if the youths merely go to the nearest park or bus stop and make more trouble? Local government does crave statistics, and the report to Basildon’s cabinet duly lists numerous verbal warnings, written warnings, and FPNs (fixed penalty notices, in local government jargon – in plain English, fines). The wardens are trained and vetted under CSAS (community safety accreditation scheme) and have power to issue fines and confiscate alcohol on-street under the PSPO (which covers all Basildon borough). The report to cabinet stated that the Eastgate shopping centre was ‘committed to becoming CSAS accredited, for security staff to obtain additional police powers’.
Where they patrol
The wardens patrol most often in Basildon, Pitsea and Wickford town centres, ‘as they are key locations in terms of levels of ASB and levels of high footfall’, the report points out. That said, people also are annoyed by or afraid of ‘illegal use of vehicles’, such as scramblers and motorcycle in parks, or e-scooters and cycles in the pedestrianised town centres (wardens ‘have regularly witnessed these being ridden when out on patrol’). Quite what are wardens, or police, supposed to do? Chase them? Lasso them?
Note that the B in ASB stands for behaviour – if someone chooses to beg on a corner or at the entrance to a bus or railway station, or ride an e-scooter recklessly and regardless of elderly passers-by, what’s going to make them change? A fine? (Assuming they’ve given their correct details.) An order? (among friends who are equally antisocial, that may be a badge of honour, not a nudge to change ways).
Despite little sign that PSPOs or any part of this approach makes town and city centres feel any more safe – who’s to say your high street isn’t more foreboding than a generation ago, purely because thanks to internet retailing far more premises are boarded up and blighted? – the authorities persist with these methods. Partly so as to show complaining residents (who complain to their councillors, who also demand answers) that councils are doing something. And partly because the stakes are high; another report to cabinet in July stated that the council aspires ‘for Basildon town centre to be a vibrant, cultural, and dynamic public space with a range of retail, leisure, and eateries’. Like many other places, including other postwar ‘new towns’, Basildon has its share of void property and needs investment. The council has ‘ambitious regeneration plans’ and hopes of an increased footfall; which could be jeopardised, by ‘fear and perceptions of crime and antisocial behaviour’. Hence a council review of town centre security.
For similar work by public protection officers in Brixton, south London – visit the Lambeth Council website.
Photo by Mark Rowe; Basildon town centre, public space CCTV.
Part one: where the two main political parties agreed on ASB.
