Anti-social Behaviour: East of England

Debate between Jen Craft and David Taylor

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) on bringing forward this important debate. Antisocial behaviour and disorder is a blight on our high streets and town centres, and I hear all too often from my constituents in Thurrock about behaviour that is making their lives a misery, forcing them to avoid problem areas and, in the worst cases, making them too afraid to leave their homes. Through experiences that have been shared with me, I see how crime perceived to be low level leads to people worrying about themselves and their children, and feeling unsafe in their community. These problems can all too often feel intractable.

At a street meeting that I recently held in west Thurrock, residents told me that their peaceful lives had been made consistently miserable by the menace of dirt bikes. One resident told me that the noise is unbearable, sometimes continuing for hours at a time. Those who work from home have their working hours consistently interrupted by the noise of dirt bikes.

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

There are many things about the Crime and Policing Bill that I welcome, but I particularly welcome the action that we are going to take on dirt bikes. I hope in the future that we also look at other types of vehicles, particularly those with modified exhausts. One of the problems that I often hear about from residents, and that I have come across many times myself, is boy racers at all hours of the day seemingly acting with impunity because the police and local councils often do not have the resources to act.

[Jen Craft]

My hon. Friend is right that powers introduced in the Crime and Policing Bill will go some way towards alleviating some of these problems. He raises a good point about how the noise itself is an issue which exacerbates people’s fear of this kind of antisocial behaviour, which makes some areas almost a no-go zone. That cannot be right. Another resident told me that when those bikes are out and about she is worried for her child’s safety. She approaches the distance between her house and the local park with fear, as she knows the bikes are being driven in an illegal and reckless manner. She worries that her child could eventually be hit by one of those drivers, having had a number of close shaves in the past.

I have held a number of coffee afternoons to bring residents together to discuss the issue of antisocial behaviour and crime in their neighbourhood. The problems I hear about are consistent, and ones that all Members in this Chamber will be familiar with—things like graffiti, disorderly behaviour, dirt bikes and fly-tipping. I know there are measures in the Crime and Policing Bill to give councils more powers to tackle fly-tipping. They are all things that add to the overall impression of an area that is run down and undesirable. Our area and places across the country deserve better than that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North spoke about her area having much to offer and great civic pride. Thurrock also has a lot to offer, but we find that too often communities are afraid to come together in that spirit because of the behaviour they see on their own doorstep. One of the things that comes up time and again is the broken link between communities and their local neighbourhood and community policing force. The refrain, which will again be familiar to most of us in the Chamber, is, “You just don’t see a police officer any more.”

The Government’s switch to pushing for community policing is the right move. It allows police officers to get to know the area, the pinch points and the issues that residents have. It offers visible reassurance to people who are afraid to leave their homes that there are police available, and that they are on their side. Quite often residents say, “I haven’t got the time to sit and call 111, or to file a report that goes into great detail about what I saw and when, but if I saw a police officer on the street, I would go up to them and say that I saw this behaviour, at this time, at this place.” That builds an intelligence-led policing narrative that can only be for the best.

That is why I welcome the Government’s move to neighbourhood and community policing. It is the kind of preventive work that stops problems becoming larger, that allows people to feel safe on their streets, and that ultimately allows for the kind of society that we all want to see and live in. Of course serious crimes must be given priority, but in this era of competing priorities, what plans do the Government have to make sure that police forces prioritise community policing, and recognise the importance of a visible police presence on the street and people having a named police officer for their area? How can we encourage police forces to follow through with that?