Tackling Crime and Burglary

A number of agencies and organisations will be available on Saturday, September 19 at Brookfield's Hospital between 10am and 3pm to give residents advice about protecting themselves, and their homes.

- Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service will visit homes and advise on smoke alarm fitting and arson prevention.

- Cambridge City Council will be on hand to talk about community safety issues, anti-social behaviour and graffiti.

- Cambridgeshire Constabulary will give residents advice about burglary prevention and law and order

- The Bobby Scheme will be offering home security improvements to the elderly and vulnerable.

Residents will also be able to get information about Neighbourhood Watch schemes, and find out more about keeping in touch with local police officers through the e-cops email service.

Any local residents in Coleridge, Romsey or the surrounding area concerned about crime and community safety in their area are welcome to come along and get some help and advice.

If you have any questions please contact community safety at the city council on 01223 457950.

Police Surgery Wednesday

Our Police Community Support Officers Mark Mitcham and Mick Stribling will be holding a Beat Surgery on Wednesday 19th August. Local residents are all welcome to just turn up and meet our PCSOs to disscuss any crime and anti-social behaviour problems that you may be facing where you live.

The surgery will be held from 19:00 to 20:00 at Lichfield Road Community Hall just off Cherry Hinton Road.

Tesco Licensing Premises Application

The deadline for representations on Tesco's application for a premises licence to sell alcohol from their planned Mill Road store closes tomorrow. Many thanks for all those who have copied me in to their representations - for info, most but not all were opposing the application.

As part of this process, I've learnt a bit about the process for making representations - which it appears is much narrower than for planning applications - you must be an interested party (which for most people means local resident), and address concerns in specific categories relating to licensing objectives. Local Councillors have no special right to comment as a local representative - if asked I can represent a constituent, but only to help put across that constituents views (I haven't been asked!). I am however a local resident in my own right, so have made representations on this issue, pasted below, which outline my views on the issue.

Meanwhile, Tesco's seem to have got started with the store conversion - with or without a licence to sell alcohol, permission for air conditioning or a plan for how they are going to deliver to the store:

"I am writing as someone living in the vicinity of the premises concerning the licensing application by Tesco Stores Ltd, 163-167 Mill Road, Cambridge

The representations relate to the prevention of crime and disorder, the protection of children from harm and public safety.

I am writing as a local resident, although as a local Councillor I am also aware of many concerns raised by constituents in neighbouring Coleridge ward about the problems of alcohol related crime and disorder.

Many areas and recreation grounds in Coleridge suffer from late night underage drinking parties – the local area is a pilot area in Cambridge for the Community Alcohol Partnership between Trading Standards and the police that aims to tackle underage drinking in public places. This partnership has identified that as well as buying alchohol themselves, young people also obtain alcohol by persuading adults to buy it for them.

There are also well documented problems with alcohol related crime disorder and anti-social behaviour in Mill Road that led to the introduction of the cumulative impact zone.

It is fully possible that a new license to sell alcohol can be issued that doesn’t contribute to these problems, for example, a responsible alcohol vendor with very well controlled sales staff, that doesn’t specialise in selling alcohol at low prices in terms of cost per unit of alcohol. In these circumstances I would have no objections in principle to the issue of a new alcohol licence on Mill Road despite the cumulative impact zone. This is presumably why the assumption that new licences will not be granted in cumulative impact zones is rebuttable.

With regards to the specifics of the proposed Tesco site, there is the issue of how the store will be delivered. A re-run of the planning arguments against the opening of this store by Tesco is clearly not appropriate, but one aspect is clearly relevant to the licensing application.

I understand that there is a planning condition on the site that prohibits delivery from the store. Delivery from Mill Road will add considerably to the dangers to cyclists using the road, and therefore is an issue of public safety.

The question therefore is the extent to which Tesco can give assurances that it will act in a very responsible way when selling alcohol, and address these concerns.

I would be opposed to Tesco being granted a license to sell alcohol on Mill Road unless they can:

Demonstrate that it has robust procedures specifically appropriate to the Mill Road context to avoid sale of alcohol that would end up with people who are likely to cause crime and disorder on Mill Road, or underage people likely to drink in Coleridge ward, along with management undertakings that these procedures will be rigorously monitored and enforced.

Undertake not to engage in irresponsible alcohol promotions or the sale of very cheap alcohol (as it arguably does do in some of its stores) which is likely to encourage irresponsible drinking, or

likely to encourage other local retailers to respond with promotions of their own.

Undertake not to deliver supplies relating to the license from Mill Road, and to comply with all other planning regulations."

Birdwood Road meeting

There has been a good response from the City Council to my requests for action on the anti-social behaviour problems on Birdwood Road that flared up a few weeks ago.

The area near St Thomas Square is being covered temporarily by mobile CCTV, and the Council's antisocial behaviour team will be holding a residents surgery. This willl be held from 4-6pm on 14th July, at the Resources Room, St Bedes School. Local residents are urged to turn up and let the Council know exactly what problems have been occurring, and this can help to inform any solutions to problems.

Birdwood Road Antisocial Behaviour

The police and Councils need to get a grip of problems with anti-social behaviour in the Birdwood Road/St Thomas Rd area of Coleridge.

For months residents have been complaining of problems from a group of young people, with allegations of intimidation, late night noise, vandalism, underage drinking and drunkenness and various traffic offences involving mopeds.

Sadly last Saturday this escalated into an incident that a police response team was called to, and I understand two local residents were arrested following some type of alleged altercation.

It is clearly now a matter for the police to investigate the incident that occurred, but I am concerned about how effective the police and Council have been in responding to previous complaints about anti-social behaviour. I have already asked the new neighbour Sargeant for East Area to report back on what incidents have been reported in the area recently, and have asked the City Council to deploy its mobile CCTV cameras in the area to try calming down the situation, and hold a residents meeting.

I do know that local residents are very unhappy, and want effective action.

Bollards!

Damage to the traffic calming on Radegund Road is getting beyond a joke. I've reported the latest damage to the Council here via www.fixmystreet.com, but this seems to happen on a weekly basis. if this was caused by a vehicle the whole thing would be written off, so it is clearly vandalism...

UPDATE: Already had a response back from both the police who will be stepping up patrols and the County who will be getting highways to fix the problem!

Burnt-out Wheelie Bins, Snapped Wing Mirrors and Graffiti

Coleridge Conservatives are concerned about a recent outbreak of criminal damage in and around Coleridge. You wouldn't have guessed it from the e-Cops reports of falling crime and antisocial behaviour being under control, but there does seem to have been a spate of activity.

It seems as if one or more people have been taking routes through part of the city and either spraying their graffiti tag 'DSC' on practically everything in sight, setting fire to wheelie bins or snapping off wing mirrors.

We are concerned that reports are perhaps not being received, processed or treated appropriately so regarding damage to cars we have asked police what reports have been received and what is being done about them, as well as whether some patrols could be instigated. Apparently there is "a bit of antisocial behaviour" around the relevant area. We are not entirely sure that "antisocial behaviour" is quite the correct classification for this crime but it's good to hear that the police are on the case.

Streets affected by the graffiti include Rustat Road, Corrie Road, Hobart Road/Suez Road and Cromwell Road. Coleridge Conservatives have reported many of these to the city council although there are still many more instances around, including lampposts as far as Coldhams Common.



I am pleased to note that the Rustat Road gates have already been repainted by the council - in fact just before I reported them, unaware that they had already been attended to.

More worrying is arson on wheelie bins, found on Brackyn Road and Charles Street:



Policing priorities for the area are again up for debate at this Thursday's East Area Committee.

Community Safety Survey - Please respond

The Safer Communities team at the City Council has been in touch. Tackling anti-social behaviour in Coleridge was one of my key election pledges, and as part of this I am encouraging residents to report all issues to the police and City Council, so that I can follow up by checking the police and Council are aware of all issues and taking appropriate action. I would therefore urge all Cambridge residents to complete the online survey. Anyway, here is the message from the Council:

Tell us about your views on, and experiences of, crime and disorder in Cambridge.

Cambridge Community Safety Partnership, together with the other partnerships in the County, is running an online survey to give people who live or work in Cambridge the chance to have their say on issues of crime and disorder.

Visit – www.snapsurveys.com/communitysafetysurvey

The information obtained by this survey will be incorporated into the 2008 ‘Strategic Assessment’ for the city. This document is produced annually and brings together all information held by different agencies and views of the public on crime and disorder. It enables the Partnership to identify the most important community safety issues in Cambridge and ensure funding and resources are directed to appropriately tackle these priorities.

We would be really grateful if you could give up a few minutes of your time to complete this online survey. Completed surveys will be put into a draw to stand the chance of winning £50 worth of high street vouchers. The survey will be online until 12th September 2008.

If you have any questions or would like a hard copy please contact Paul Griffin at Cambridge City Council on 01223 457045, or email paul.griffin@cambridge.gov.uk

Complete our latest survey on line

If you are a Coleridge resident, you should shortly be receiving our latest In Touch newsletter.

This month we are including a resident's survey covering two of the key issues in the ward at the moment - speeding and rat-running on residential roads, and crime/anti-social behaviour. We are keen to know your views on these issues, so we can try to persuade the powers that be to take some action.

In particular, as mentioned before, there may be scope for residents action groups to tackle speeding drivers, so we are keen to know if any local residents are interested in this idea and would like to help take it forward.

On crime and anti-social behaviour, we are concerned about under-reporting of problems, and want to make sure that the police and City Council are fully aware of all the problems so they can direct appropriate resources.(We will be discussing all the problems noted with the police, anonymously unless you are happy to let the police know who is reporting the problems). And the police are also trying to restart neighbourhood watch schemes, so we are keen to hear from residents interested in getting involved in this.

For the first time in Coleridge, the survey is available online at http://survey.quorate.org/coleridgejuly2008

The resident's survey is intended for Coleridge residents, but if you are elsewhere in the City and have strong views on the issues, please feel free to fill in the survey and we will try to follow up the issues.

County Initiatives set to help Coleridge

At a briefing yesterday for Councillors in the City from the Conservative run County Council, a couple of initiatives were mentioned that should be good news for Coleridge.

The first is that following a pilot scheme in St Neots, the County Council trading standards department in association with the police has launched a Community Alcohol partnership in Cambridge to tackle underage drinking, and Coleridge is one of the three wards set to benefit. The aim is to get the various parties tackling underage drinking to work together to stop the problems. There will be work with retailers to stop under 18s buying alcohol. However, it was shocking to discover that many underage drinkers discovered by the police get their alcohol from adults and even their parents. So as well as involving the police to crack down on underage drinking in public, the the new campaign also involves education in schools and communication of the problems to adults.

The other initiative of interest was the suggestion that the Council could support community anti-speeding groups, who can hopefully monitor problem roads, identify drivers going to fast, which could either result in advice being issued by the police, or more targetted police enforcement action. I have long been disappointed with police response to the problems of speeding on various roads in the ward, and the inflexibility and cost of many of the proposed solutions to the problem such as traffic calming or fixed cameras - a community based approach could encourage more drivers to behave responsibly on their local roads.

Both these initiatives should have the ability to target action on those who aren't being responsible and are causing problems, and I fully support them.