Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-190)
CLLR SIR
DAVID WILLIAMS,
MR PETER
HUNT AND
MR SIMON
BAXTER
22 APRIL 2004
Q180 Mrs Clark: Anti-social behaviour.
Sir David Williams: There has
been an ASBO against a pensioner.
Mr Baxter: I think it goes across
all social boundaries and age groups to be fair.
Q181 Mrs Clark: You have talked quite
a bit about education and how important that is. I would say—speaking
as an ex-teacher—that nowadays there is more and more on
the curriculum both at primary and secondary about the importance
of monitoring your environment and caring for your environment
but it seems to me that it is not working, is it? Young people
still hang around on those street corners, kicking tins and behaving
in a very intimidating and anti-social way. Is that because they
see it all on the television and are just mimicking those sorts
of patterns?
Sir David Williams: If they mimicked
what they saw on television they would not just be hanging around
street corners, I suspect, so we had better be grateful that they
are mostly standing still. It is a culture thing, is it not? It
is impossible to say when these gradual changes happened. I personally
do not think the intimidating gangs of teenage boys on street
corners are any different from when I used to do it 50 years ago.
I think that we are too aware of some of the potential problems
now. Fear of crime is a phrase that is often used. Some things
are worse; some things are better. We must not let up on the education
and that is really where you are going to succeed.
Q182 Chairman: The perception is that
it has got a lot worse. I was talking to some people locally recently
who are actually frightened of telling people to pick up litter
because they are going to get an earful of verbal abuse. I am
not sure that you would have done that 50 years ago.
Sir David Williams: No, I probably
would have picked up the litter.
Chairman: Exactly. Simon Thomas?
Q183 Mr Thomas: We obviously have a long
way to go when an Oscar-winning actor can take a dog to a park
to do his business, so education is clearly a key to this. Mr
Baxter earlier in the evidence said that this was all pretty hit
and miss even at local authority level and really it is a question
of getting the LGA to think about the evidence we have been receiving.
We have had some very good examples—we have just had a very
good one shown to us of a badge campaign—Whereas we have
also received evidence of bad or poor practice within local authorities,
authorities that have not caught up. Clearly there is a variance
in budgetary constraints and the sort of authority and whether
you have a lot of derelict land or whether you have a lot of inner
city areas or whatever it may be. What is the LGA doing to actually
promote national guidelines and promote best practice throughout
authority areas? Can you give us some positive examples of where
now those poorer performing authorities are actually being brought
up?
Sir David Williams: One of the
things the LGA is doing and is actively involved in is the protocol
about fly-tipping illegal waste. The only practical way that local
authorities can get to grips with this, negotiate with ministries
and national organisations is through the Local Government Association.
However, we accept there is very variable practice; there is a
very variable level of offences too which is the other thing that
inevitably you will get differences about. Now we have websites
we have done quite a lot more on best practice. One of the things
that we have to do is to get at councillors as well as council
officers and typically you need one page one screen information
sheets if you are going to do it through councillors who have
busy lives to run and much prefer things on one sheet of the paper
or one screen of a PC. The Improvement and Development Agency—which
is a connected organisation to the Local Government Association—has
a series of items or issues on one screen per issue which is very
effective. IDA knowledge is the overall name of this and councillors
are repeatedly told about this. The Local Government Association
publishes at some cost a weekly magazine that goes to every councillor
and the educative value of that is very significant. They are
put in touch with best practice, they get articles written by
other councillors in there, they get advertisements about things
like IDA knowledge and so on. That dissemination is easier and
that is something we take very seriously in the LGA.
Q184 Mr Thomas: Can you see a rising
of performances?
Sir David Williams: Yes. If you
can get at councillors in this they can see some direct political
benefit from running successful, high publicity campaigns about
things that people are concerned about as we have been talking
about today.
Q185 Chairman: We were interested in
noise as an issue but it would seem that nobody else is because
we have had hardly any memoranda back dealing with noise and very
few people have actually raised it in evidence sessions. Is there
not a problem with noise?
Sir David Williams: There is a
problem with noise. The main problem I am aware of in my own borough
of Richmond-upon-Thames is noisy parties—apart from aeroplanes
and night flights (we won against the Department of Transport
four times and still they went to the European Court of Appeal)—and
felt we had to do something about it using an anti-noisy party
patrol. The difficulty we have had is that it is not the police
that enforces, it is the local authority. You have to have an
environmental health officer with a sound meter and so on. The
noisy party patrol has been successful and this is, if you like,
an urban area problem but it can be extremely irritating and local
authorities have had some success in prosecuting this. We would
recommend noisy party patrols at least every summer weekend, but
again it is quite expensive with the overtime for the environmental
health officers in all this.
Q186 Chairman: These are literally environmental
health officers in a van driving around neighbourhoods.
Sir David Williams: It is basically
using the borough's control centre that handles all out of hours
emergencies and calls like this with links to the police station
because people normally ring the police first. Apart from aircraft
noise that is the problem we have had in Richmond-upon-Thames.
Mr Baxter: Some of the complaints
I have had recently have not been about noisy parties but actually
about tenants or residents of adjoining houses and it is sometimes
just poor construction. I was dealing with a case of an elderly
couple saying that there were young children running up and down
upstairs and they are now both on medication. They tried to speak
to the person upstairs who said that they are quiet but they are
six and seven years old. They have to run up and down. They live
on an estate and it is very difficult and the sound insulation
is very poor. I do think ultimately—and it may be slightly
extreme—that the way I have suggested these people go round
it is that they speak to the neighbour again and actually step
up some action because it may be that she is winding the couple
up and they actually think about using an ASBO or acceptable behaviour
contract; you can be subject to an ASBO for anything that causes
harassment, alarm or distress. I think this legislation which
is very new can be very effective in reducing that sort of behaviour.
I live in a semi-detached house. I am very lucky and for the last
20 years I had a pensioner living next to me who has passed away
and there is now a young family living there. They are very nice people
but their children—young boys—are probably as noisy
as my sister and I were to him. We are a small family and we are
very quiet but I can hear the doors shutting and sometimes I think
that an ASBO would be useful but I do not think that is a good
way for neighbourly relations to form. Sometimes it can be annoying:
doors slamming, "Mum, he's strangling me again!" which
is what I often hear.
Q187 Mrs Clark: I am afraid that is just
children just being human children. If you are going to go down
the route that it should be encouraged or even suggested that
children should be kitted out with kids' slippers at all times
then I think that is madness. I think there is a huge difference
between that and, for example, the couple who are screaming and
yelling and throwing things. That is anti-social behaviour, particularly
if it is sustained.
Mr Baxter: I was being light hearted
on that one; my neighbours are brilliant. I accept that I live
in central London, I am very lucky but sometimes the noise does
get slightly annoying. In the case of the pensioners I think it
is slightly different especially if they are being wound up. I
do agree that many boroughs have some great work that goes on
to reduce that.
Q188 Chairman: Are there any new powers
that you would like to have to deal with noise?
Sir David Williams: I think the
Anti-Social Behaviour Order is a good way forward because unless
they were council tenants—as they often were—and were
extremely noisy neighbours and were forced to move, the only thing
you could really do at the end of the day was take out an injunction.
It had to be really extreme behaviour to justify that and ASBOs
are a useful intermediate step on that. However, we do have to
live and let live.
Q189 Mr Challen: I just have a comment
on noisy motorbikes. New laws were introduced to limit the decibel
levels of motorbikes. They are usually the smaller motorbikes;
people who can afford a big one generally are not bothered about
altering their exhaust systems to make more noise. I do not know
if you have any comments on this, but it seems to me that that
legislation has made no difference whatsoever because it is such
a difficult thing to deal with because you cannot chase them very
easily and if you do get hold of them we are often told that the
equipment to measure the noise is not available or is too expensive
or whatever.
Mr Baxter: The Police Reform Act
has recently been amended. It was introduced to prevent motorbikes
being driven up and down on estates erratically by youngsters
or over a field or through a park. It gives the police the power
to seize them and ultimately destroy them. On the first occasion
they are warned and then on the second occasion they are seized
if it is that same person. I think the legislation is there, it
just needs to be encouraged to be used far more effectively than
it currently is, certainly with motorbikes. It is not about decibels;
my understanding is that if it causes a nuisance they can seize
it.
Q190 Sue Doughty: Just a very brief point
about the 24-hour society. I do not know about your experience
but my experience in the surgery is generally about people running
appliances at three o'clock in the morning and things like that
and also getting any proof that this is going on. I just wondered
whether we were seeing an increase in different sorts of behaviour
which are acceptable for one person but not for another, but leading
to these problems where one person cannot sleep because the washing
machine is running on the other side of the party wall.
Sir David Williams: I have had
one or two cases as a ward councillor from this. I do not think
it has got significantly worse despite the 24-hour society. The
little experience I have had is that you tend to get blocks of
flats that are largely people who have unsocial hours or ten flats,
three air hostesses, stockbrokers getting up at four o'clock in
the morning. It is not an increasing problem but it is a background
problem that members of Parliament and local councillors will
get on an intermittent basis in their case work.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed;
you have been most helpful and we are very grateful. Mr Hunt,
thank you for the papers you have brought for us.
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