Recently I spent a morning with Hartlepool Police on duty. This was meant to be the start of a 30-day commitment as part of the Parliamentary Police Scheme, but unfortunately ministerial duties have meant that I am unable to commit to such a large amount of time.
Despite not doing the Parliamentary Police Scheme, I have in recent years had two shifts with the local force. They were both weekend shifts and tended to be focused on the anti-social behaviour that emanates around pubs and alcohol. This shift was different, as I was patrolling in a panda car (do they still call them that? Showing my age I think) on a bright and sunny weekday. There wasn’t the same level of urgency as in previous shifts; however I was doing the patrol with the same officer with whom I’d done a night shift, and I remember the absolute venom in which a drunken yob was effing and blinding at him and me. However, he said that you have to take the rough with the smooth.
The incident which we attended, and which I tried to stop getting in the way, was a fire at the back of some shops in Dyke House. A pile of furniture had been deliberately set alight, and the police were trying to keep members of the public away from the fire. This incident brought home to me just how dangerous the police’s job is, even on what seemed like a mundane shift in the middle of the day. It must be very difficult to be the spouse or partner of a police officer, knowing what they have to contend with on every shift.
Before the shift I was able to have a long chat with a number of police officers about their experience of fighting crime in Hartlepool. Some of them have long service on the force, and their recollections were extremely interesting. One of them shocked me at first by saying that, when he joined the force about a dozen years ago, it was great compared to now. I didn’t know what he meant, but he said that in the early and mid 1990s places throughout the town were virtually no-go areas, with estates run by gangs and with dramatic car chases. I think he was being flippant to make a vital point, which collectively in Hartlepool I think we often forget, which is crime is coming down in Hartlepool, and coming down faster than other parts of the country.
Although serious crime in the town is on the decrease, anti-social behaviour in Hartlepool remains high. Officers who I spoke to told me that they thought that this was because some private landlords in the town were not managing their tenants appropriately. This means, as many of my constituents tell me at my weekly surgeries, that there can be one unruly family in a street causing a menace to other residents, safe in the knowledge that their landlord won’t do anything about it. One poor tenant can mean a number of anti-social behaviour referrals from residents and this has to stop. This is why I am so keen for the town to adopt “selective licensing”. The idea behind selective licensing is that, in an area which has high levels of anti-social behaviour, all landlords in that area have to have a licence from the local council in order to let out a property. Put simply this means that if you are a bad landlord or have not shown that you will deal effectively with anti-social tenants, you do not get a licence.
As part of my role as a Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government, I have responsibility for selective licensing. I think it has the potential to significantly reduce anti-social behaviour in areas where residents are suffering and I really hope that local councils, including Hartlepool, get on board and apply for it. The sooner the better as far as I am concerned.
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