Southampton Cycle Challenge

Hello again. Some of you may be aware of the Southampton Cycle challenge, organised by the Southampton City Council. We have joined as the Southampton Central Safer Neighbourhood Teams, and not doing too badly. The idea is to get as many staff as possible out and riding a bike. As part of the challenge we have arranged cycle training for all our teams so we can use the Police bikes. We have 3 marked Police bikes, and the idea is that the officers can use them to get to, and around their beats, particularly when we move to the new police station in Southern Rd, which will be further from our beats. It has been a bit of fun on the challenge and it is surprising how the miles add up. If you have not seen it, check out the webpage, there is a week of the challenge left.

Still with cycling – we are continuing with the enforcement of cycling on the pavement, across the Itchen Bridge. PCSO Dave Wright issued another 3 tickets during the week, but we are still getting complaints. I have spoken to the Council about some possible improvements, like a drop kerb at the end of the cycle path from Basepoint to encourage cyclists on to the bridge rather than staying on the pavement. We will continue to enforce and educate, assisted by our colleagues from Bitterne, on their side of the bridge. This is a community priority, as decided at the last St Mary’s PACT (Partners and Community Together) meeting at the beginning of June. Another of the priorities was children getting on the roofs of premises in the Basepoint business area. PCSO Ed Wiggans has identified some children, and spoke to them and their parents. Hopefully that will reduce some of the problems. He has also spoken to some of the businesses to see if we can reduce the opportunity to access the roofs. The 3rd priority for St Mary’s is the sheer volume of traffic passing through Chapel now that Central Bridge is closed. It makes crossing Chapel Rd very difficult for parents and children, particularly on the school run. Councillor Sarah Bogle is on the case.

In Northam we still have the community priority for no left/no right turn at the Prince of Wales junction. That will probably go on and on as there are so many offenders all the time. Anti Social Behaviour as Princes Court is still ongoing, but we are making inroads with the particular problem flat. The tenant is well aware of all the complaints, and it is down to him now, otherwise he may find himself losing the flat. Regarding the priority of vulnerable people being bullied by youths, I visited 3 Somali families recently and they seem happy that the instances are reducing. Again, we have the names of the main antagonists and will be doing things to try to stop them.

On a down side, we have been getting few robberies and incidents on Central Bridge and around that area. One incident a few weeks ago was very high profile when the lad was attacked on his bike. We have identified some suspects for that incident and there have been some arrests. There is also another group – a bit younger, who had been committing crime in Woolston. Sgt Moray Anderson, who runs the safer neighbourhood Team in Woolston has done some work on them, and now it seems they have crossed to out patch. Needless to say, we will be doing some work to try to deter them over here.

Finally commiserations to PCSO Ed Wiggans. He has passed all the interviews to join the Constabulary as a police officer, only to be that due the budget cuts, there is a ban on recruiting. On the plus side, it means I keep him longer though. If you have any comments on anything in the blog – or would like anything included, please let me know – there ahs not been a comment for ages, and ages, and ages

Cheers

Dick