Easter Adjournment

Rebecca Paul Excerpts

Tuesday 8th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Paul (Reigate) (Con)]

I am pleased to rise today and speak in my first Easter Adjournment debate. I also pay tribute to Sir David Amess, whom unfortunately I never had the pleasure of meeting.

Today I wish to speak about neighbourhood policing and tackling town centre crime—we were due to debate that important topic yesterday, so I thought I would take the opportunity to raise it today. It is particularly relevant to Redhill in my constituency, which has been suffering from increased levels of antisocial behaviour and crime in recent years. Redhill is an amazing town that is the cultural epicentre of our local area. It has undergone significant transformation over the past decade, with new developments such as The Rise, which includes The Light cinema. As a result, I am pleased to say that more people from further afield are visiting and enjoying all that Redhill has to offer. That is a positive thing for our local economy, but at the same time we have seen an increase in antisocial behaviour.

To address the real issues faced, the Safer Redhill initiative was established. That is a partnership between Surrey police, the office of the police and crime commissioner, Reigate and Banstead borough council and East Surrey YMCA to cut crime and foster pride in the town. The project adopts the College of Policing’s “Clear, hold, build” framework, which is a three-stage approach where offenders are cleared from the area, and then partners work together to put in place interventions to keep it that way.

From drug operations at Redhill train station to plain-clothes officers out at night looking for suspicious behaviour, huge amounts have been achieved as part of the Safer Redhill initiative. There have been 155 arrests, with a combined prison time of 25 years for local offenders, 86 drug seizures—including 10 kg of suspected cocaine—£89,000 of cash recovered and weapons taken off the streets. I take this opportunity to thank Surrey police, especially Jon Vale, the borough commander, and Lisa Townsend, the police and crime commissioner, for ensuring that Redhill got the additional police focus it needed at the right time.

However, making Redhill safer is not all about police action; it is also about prevention, and that is where East Surrey YMCA has come in. With its qualified youth workers, it has been supporting local young people at risk of offending or becoming NEET—not in education, employment or training—by giving them the support they need and helping them to thrive and flourish. With their Y bus, the YMCA has been getting out and about in Redhill to engage with the young people, and I thank it for the important part it has played in making Redhill safer and ensuring a more positive future for the next generation.

Safer Redhill is an inspiring example of what can be achieved by the police, the local council and the charity sector working hand in hand, with all partners bringing different skills and expertise to the table, but with the same ultimate goal. I thank and pay tribute to everyone involved. It is wonderful to see the local community starting to feel safer in the town centre and businesses feeling more confident about their future in Redhill.

However, there is still much to do, and I will speak briefly on some of the other challenges faced in Redhill town centre. The first is pavement parking. Redhill has a fantastic pedestrianised shopping area, but some people mistake it for a car park and even use it as a cut-through. That behaviour by motorists is disrespectful and downright dangerous. There used to be physical bollards in place to prevent access by cars, and those need to be fixed, as that would go a long way towards addressing the issue. But we in this place also have a role to play. We must ensure that unnecessary and antisocial pavement parking, as in the case of Redhill town centre, is tackled and routinely enforced. That type of parking affects wheelchair users, people with visual impairments and those with pushchairs, making it difficult for them to get around safely. Redhill residents have been raising this issue for years, and we must tackle it.

Currently, it is not a criminal offence for a car to park on the pavement, which is to ensure that traffic continues to flow on narrow roads where pavement parking is the only option, but it is an offence if the vehicle creates an unnecessary obstruction. The problem here is what constitutes an unnecessary obstruction, and that ambiguity makes it incredibly difficult for the police to successfully prosecute offenders. As a consequence of the low success rate, we see few instances of the police enforcing it. I therefore urge Government Ministers to look at how we can make it clearer which types of pavement parking are prohibited and which are not, so that effective enforcement can be deployed by the police or even the local authority, creating the necessary deterrent effect.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to talk for so long about the wonderful town of Redhill and the huge amount of work that has been put into making it safer. I will now bring my remarks to a close so that others may contribute.