Everyone deserves to feel safe in their neighbourhood. Residents should be able to go about their daily lives, walk through the town centre, use local parks and take their children to school without being confronted by criminality, intimidation or open drug taking. That is why we have made making our borough safer a key priority.
Many residents have raised concerns with me and other councillors about seemingly increasing amounts of open drug use. As a council we are extremely clear open drug use on our streets is never acceptable and we will use all our powers to punish people involved. We also need a similar level of commitment from the police. We have very clearly made our case to the deputy mayor for policing and crime and the commissioner of the Met. I have called on them to immediately to do more in this area.
This is a problem across our borough but is particularly acute in Southall. We need a greater police presence to reassure local people that they are safe to go about their business and that crime will not be tolerated.
As a council, we have already stepped up our response. We have introduced proactive CCTV monitoring and targeted patrols in the areas where residents have reported the greatest concerns. Additional ParkGuard patrols have been deployed for an initial 2-week period to gather intelligence, provide visible reassurance to local people and support enforcement activity. We are also taking enforcement action against properties and locations identified as contributing to antisocial behaviour and criminal activity.
Alongside these immediate measures, we are developing a longer-term programme of work to strengthen CCTV coverage, increase enforcement capacity and improve aspects of the local environment that can enable crime and antisocial behaviour. Together, these actions demonstrate our commitment to tackling the issues residents are facing, but sustained police support will also be essential to deliver lasting change.
We need a partnership, we need local people to continue to report crimes to the police, we need to continue to work on making our town centres and parks as safe as possible and we need the police to bring extra resources to bear.
Alongside our tough enforcement action, the council has also funded long-term additional recovery services. For people who are using drugs there is a way out of their addiction. Many residents have turned their life around through the excellent work that our drug and alcohol recovery services do and we will continue to support any local people that want to make a positive change to their lives.
Everyone should feel safe in their community. The council is doing everything in our power to ensure you do. We will continue to call on the police to help us make sure people feel safe.
