Youth Nuisance and plans for the Saints game

Well, we had the Stadium Monitoring Group meeting at St Marys last Wednesday, and it was very interesting. Good to Saints are in healthy position now, and noticeable that they are one of a very few teams who are actually buying players at the moment. There are obviously a lot of arrangements being made towards the FA Cup against Portsmouth. We have been visiting pubs in the area to see what their plans are and speaking to people in the community to identify any concerns. We had thought of having a Community Advice Group to meet and discuss issues, but most people feel that there is no need, and that as long as the key members in the community have police contact, then that will be fine. If you have any concerns or worries, or indeed hear of anything that you think the police may be interested in regarding the match, please let us know.

We have been suffering a small amount of youth nuisance recently in St Marys. On Friday evening there was a report of a group being a nuisance in James St and the team got down there and found them. The kids were all spoken to, and some taken home. W will be sending letters to the parents. I keep a copy and we share this information with the Safer Communities team from the Council and also inform Housing or the social landlord if applicable. This is because it is in the tenancy agreement that people should behave in the local area, and the parents, as tenants would be responsible for the actions of their children. This generally works very well, and we support the kids and parents as much as we can. As it happens, we agreed our first Acceptable Behaviour Contract (ABC) for about a year with a child on Friday. The lad has come to our notice a few times, and has also been arrested. The idea of the ABC is to agree a code of conduct, a few rules, for the child. The agreement is generally with the police, housing provider, child and parent. They seem to work quite well. It lasts for 6 months but can be reviewed at any time. We will have another 2 to do in the next week or so.

This coming week we have the Northam tenants and Residents association meeting, the Kingsland Resident meeting and I am planning for the first St Marys Community Priority Setting meeting on 9 February at Central Hall. I have had several people volunteer to be part of the Community Priority Panel, so fingers crossed it will all go OK.

Well, back to the planning for 13 February…..

Cheers

Dick