Town Centre Safety

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

The town centre has become one of the dominant issues in Ipswich. When I talk to constituents, it comes up perhaps more than any other issue, particularly over the past year or two. In the time that I have been the MP, there have been a few tragic cases. A few months after I was elected, my constituent Richard Day was killed on St Matthew’s Street. Early this year, a teenager was killed in a knife attack in broad daylight on Westgate Street. That had a chilling effect throughout the town. Just a few days ago, at the Clapgate Lane Conservative Club, an attacker held a knife to the throat of one of my constituents. I have written to those at the club and will be visiting it soon to discuss how they are recovering from that incident, which was very chilling.

The thing about the town centre is that some of the most inspiring people I have met in Ipswich have been in town centre businesses. Just this Monday, before travelling to Parliament, I visited Miss Quirky Kicks, which has relocated in Ipswich and has a new café-bar—if anybody in Ipswich is listening and wants to go, I suggest that they do. There is also Geek Retreat Ipswich, which of course is part of a national franchise but is actually pretty decentralised. Geek Retreat Ipswich does fantastic work. It had its two-year anniversary recently. Its work to support neurodiverse individuals in particular should be commended.

As the Member of Parliament for an area that has a great history and a town centre with inspirational businesses, but which faces challenges, it is sometimes difficult to get the balance right between representing the concerns of my constituents and not talking the town down. That is a difficult balancing act, and although I do my best to get it right, some people might think that I do not always get it right. I cannot pretend that things are a bed of roses, because I think my constituents would look at me and wonder if I was on something, so I have to speak frankly and directly about the challenges as I see them.

When I knock on doors at the moment, I hear the reality that a lot of Ipswich residents who have lived in the town their whole lives are shunning their own town centre; they are going to Bury St Edmunds, Woodbridge and other areas. That is a problem, and there are many reasons for it. Some of the things that affect our town centre affect town and city centres up and down the country, and they are not easy to tackle: the growth of online retail; empty units; business rates, which need further reform; and, of course, the Labour council’s car-parking charge, which, according to my recent survey, 76% of people think are too high—I am just dropping that one in there.

Safety and crime is probably the No. 1 issue. The reality is that large numbers of my constituents do not go into the town centre because they do not feel safe and secure doing so. On that point, we have had shared prosperity funding to increase the number of PCSOs in the town centre during daylight hours, we have had safer streets funding and, of course, we have had our share of the 20,000 police officer uplift, so we have more bobbies on the beat in the town centre. In the Suffolk constabulary, I deal perhaps the most with Superintendent Martin. I have a huge amount of time and respect for what the constabulary does—it will always have my backing.

What people are saying in their responses to my survey is clear. I personally enter all the survey responses myself. So far, I have entered almost 1,000 responses. It is a bit of a weird thing, but I like to feel the responses, and I can only do so if I enter them myself—it is very strange and is making my flat look a bit of a bomb site at the moment, with envelopes and surveys everywhere. But anyway, the nuts and bolts of the issue are that, when asked, “Do you support a zero-tolerance approach to antisocial behaviour?”, 91% of responding constituents agreed. When it comes to the groups of large men we see—the groups of large men congregating and acting in a very antisocial way in the town centre, who are not dispersed by or engaged with by the police as directly as I would like—some 88% of those who responded to my survey said that they think those groups should be dispersed. Shoplifting is also a problem in the town, and 91% of respondents agreed that there should be tougher punishments for shoplifting, while only 3% disagreed.

The survey asked people which two of seven things would make the biggest difference towards getting them back into the town centre, and No. 1 of the seven was the police adopting a tougher, zero-tolerance approach to antisocial behaviour, so although I have a huge amount of respect for our police, we need more of them in the town centre. In addition, we need them to adopt a more robust attitude to dealing with the individuals in the town centre who are blighting the experience for the majority of my constituents and undermining a beautiful town and its historic centre. If people are not going into the town centre because of the behaviour of a small minority, that is a real problem.

On the shoplifting point, we do need to have the deterrent there. There is a challenge here, however, because some of those engaging in shoplifting are younger. One of the businesses I spoke to earlier this week said that those engaged in shoplifting are 16 and 17-year-olds, so it can be more challenging to deal with them.

In conclusion, based on my survey responses, when it comes to town centre safety, we need to boost the police presence in the town centre, adopt a zero-tolerance attitude and crack down incredibly hard on the rogue minority who are blighting the experience of the majority. We need to disperse the groups of large men who are hanging around and put in place much tougher punishments for those who engage in shoplifting. We have a great town in Ipswich—I am very proud to represent it—but the reality of the situation is that thousands of my constituents are shunning their own town centre because they do not feel safe. That is not me talking down the town; it is me seeking to represent my constituents. I am not going to stand here and pretend that everything is wonderful. Yes, I welcome the uplift and the shared prosperity funding, but we need action. We need to turn the situation around, and I will continue to work with the Minister—for whom I have quite a lot of time—to try to get robust action for my constituents.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call the shadow Minister to start the wind-ups.