Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

Best practice Plymouth

SRDA Good Practice Summary
Southway precinct, Plymouth - involving the wider community

Introduction

The Southway project aimed to tackle the problems associated with youth nuisance and improve the appearance of the precinct area by re-designing its layout.

Intelligence / Context of the scheme

The retail initiative focused on a precinct in Southway, Plymouth, containing fifteen shops and one local library. All of the shops face towards a concrete square, where large groups of young people often congregated and played football. Retailers and customers alike perceived this as a nuisance as shop windows were often smashed and noise levels were high.

The problem was identified through a mixture of local police intelligence and consultation with retailers and customers. Local stakeholders were invited to two public meetings to discuss how to alleviate the problems and improve the appearance of the precinct. This helped to involve those that were most affected and identified realistic solutions to the problems that were faced. Decisions from the meeting were then written up into a newsletter and distributed to all attendees and other interested stakeholders. Young people were also invited to the meeting as the project team were very keen for the scheme not to be perceived as 'anti-youth' project and wanted to include young people in any decisions that they made.

Interventions

The interventions took an environmental design approach to tackling anti-social behaviour, focusing on the precinct area rather than individual retailers. The interventions were well targeted, taking care to improve the appearance of the precinct area as well as designing out anti-social behaviour. The table below lists the interventions and their anticipated outcomes:

Interventions	Anticipated outcome
Strategic placing of seats, bins, trees and animal play statues.	Reduce the space in which the youths could play football and improve the appearance of the precinct
Removal of concrete posts	Stop them being used as goalposts and the windows behind them being smashed
Replace flat roof with sloping roof	Footballs no longer become lodged on the roof, and capacity to climb on to roof is removed
Gate off covered entrance	Stop young people congregating there late at night
Mural and notice board	Improve the appearance of the precinct and foster a sense of community

After the public meeting there was an acceptance that the young people had nowhere else to play football and that a lot of the damage was accidental rather than malicious. The project team also aimed to find an alternative site for the young people to congregate and play.

Implementation and involvement

The project was run as a multi-agency partnership, which meant that various fields of experience, knowledge and expertise could be drawn upon. A police officer seconded to the Community Safety Unit managed the project. The owners of the precinct were actively involved in the project, suggesting and funding the employment of the architect to redesign the precinct. The community was actively involved in the design of the mural. Over a hundred people were involved in the process including young people, the mother and toddler groups, elderly residents and a local art group. Local people are portrayed in the mural and are placed in un-stereotypical positions with the hope of breaking down prejudices and fostering a sense of pride in the community. After the mural was painted, the local play centre commissioned the same artist to do a second one.

Outcomes and sustainability

There was evidence to suggest that the interventions had a positive impact on levels of anti-social behaviour in the shopping area. Results from the project evaluation demonstrated a reduction in the retailers' experiences of crime and disorder. Efforts were made to find an alternative site for the young people to play football but were unsuccessful. Unfortunately this limited the level of success that the project could hope to achieve, as without somewhere more suitable to play football there was always a chance the young people would still congregate in the shopping area. Results from the pre-post survey did suggest that the young people still congregated and played football in the precinct. Overall the project was well-targeted, bringing in further investment to the precinct area that would not have happened without the SRDA funding. Levels of anti-social behaviour seem to have improved and need to be built upon further with the longer-term aim of finding an alternative site for the young people.

Key Good Practice Environmental design approach to tackling anti-social behaviour - The project aimed to design out the problem of the young people playing football by the strategic placing of the 'street furniture' and 'gating off' one of the entrances that the young people congregated in. Multi-agency working -The project was run as a multi-agency partnership involving people from the police, the Community Safety Partnership, the Youth and Community Team and a private company. The involvement of the private company has led to extra investment in the area that may not otherwise have occurred. Level of consultation - Public meetings, newsletter and articles in the local newspaper were all written to keep the community and retailers involved and up-to-date with the decisions of the project team. The community was actively involved in the design of the mural. The designer consulted and worked with a number of local community groups and local people are represented within the mural itself.

Contact details

For further information about the Southway project please contact:

Keith Halsey

Plymouth Community Safety Partnership

Community Safety Unit

Unit 1 Brooklands

Budshead Road

Crownhill

Plymouth

PL6 5XR

Keith.Halsey@plymouth.gov.uk

Author: Helen Yeo, Home Office Regional Research Team, Government Office for the South-West, June 2004.

 

Last update: 25 November 2004