Antisocial Behaviour

Bell Ribeiro-Addy Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2026 Westminster Hall

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan) for bringing forward this important debate.

I begin by commending the work of Action on ASB!, a community campaign set up in Brixton to push for action on crime and antisocial behaviour, and made up of residents who simply want their neighbourhood to feel safer. As with other Members, antisocial behaviour—on high streets and tubes and at train stations right across our neighbourhood—keeps coming up in my casework and correspondence. Residents on Nursery Road describe public urination, defecation and aggression. On Bernay’s Grove, people have found human waste on their doorsteps. On Electric Avenue, constituents tell me about drug use and soliciting at the Brixon high street end. On St Rule Street, residents report parties, drug taking and intimidating behaviour. On the Roupell Park estate, people tell me about bullying and disrespect towards older residents.

Antisocial behaviour is also a huge hindrance to businesses and those who work really hard to keep them going. My constituents raise these issues year after year, but they have given up on reporting, because the process is too long and feels like it does not yield results.

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

Just this morning, one of my Horsham constituents contacted me about the risk of a “Why bother?” attitude—why bother to report anything if nothing ever gets done? But in Kilnwood Vale, residents and local councillors Hannah Butler and Sam Raby refused to accept that reckless street racing is just something to put up with, and we now have a CCTV camera. Does the hon. Member agree that we have to prove to local residents that we are listening and that it is worth bothering?

[Dawn Butler (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. He is absolutely right: we do have to show them that these interventions are working, not least because it adds to the data on how much policing is needed in the area. If people do not report these things, and do not feel like there are results, nothing can really move forward.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to neighbourhood policing. The Government say they met their first target in January this year, but my constituents are not seeing or feeling that police presence on their streets in a meaningful way. For example, when the corner shop next door to my constituency office was robbed at knifepoint, our officers were probably being deployed to arrest pensioners holding up signs in central London. I would like my constituents to feel the effect of the proper community policing pledged by this Government, with the delivery of real neighbourhood policing officers sped up in places like Brixton, where the problems are long standing and well documented.

I would also like to see my local council, Lambeth, properly funded to tackle the addiction and homelessness crisis we face. We must get the root of the matter. We need to see a holistic approach to antisocial behaviour, because we simply cannot police our way out of this problem. I also truly believe that a difference can be made with a standing multi-agency group that brings together the police, the council, health services, housing and outreach teams, so that people are talking to each other and not working in silos—an issue I see time and again, with different bodies trying to tackle this problem, but no one talking to each other. That is not working, and is only exacerbating my constituents’ concerns about not being properly listened to and being made to feel that they are going round the same roundabouts.

Clapham and Brixton Hill should be a place where everyone feels safe. My constituents are asking to be listened to and to see change and, as someone who has called the area my home for my entire life, so am I.