Kings Cross Environment

Reports reach me from Paul Convery of trouble in the neighbourhood – it seems the outbreaks of graffiti are only the tip of the iceberg.  We need huge investment in large scale youth work to give kids, who are essentially decent something more useful to do.  And palliative measures to help out the overwhelmed  estate staff. Paul Convery in a mail to Councillors, police, youth workers and officials says:

‘The Bemerton has gone through a very difficult couple of weeks as upwards of three to four dozen teenagers from all over the Borough have begun to socialise, drink, smoke and then get pretty aggressive and destructive. Almost every day there are smashed bottles, graffiti, urine, scattered foodstuffs, up-ended garbage and other damage to the estate’s fabric. I’ve run into these kids almost every day and evening over the last 10 days and their behaviour is completely unacceptable. It needs tough and determined action right away to provide some relief to residents on the estate … combined with some longer term solutions to stop it happening again.

‘I hope that the combined efforts of the police, HfI’s anti social behaviour team and others will have the desired effect over the coming few days. Islington Council has this evening issued a press notice saying that all necessary measures will be used to crack-down on the trouble that has blighted the estate over the past couple of weeks….I speak for all the local Councillors when I say it’s appalling that it has taken this long for the penny to drop: ordinary, decent kids when massed in a gang and left to their own devices end up causing damage and distress.’

‘For too long, Islington’s policy has concentrated resources on a tiny minority of very bad offenders and has ignored the majority of young people – only when these kids start to run amok does someone start paying attention. We need proper investment on a significant scale.’

Alex Scourgie who manages the estate with a high degree of professionalism says:

‘Again we start our day on Bemerton with 8 caretakers spending the next 6 hours clearing graffiti, clearing broken bottles, clearing drugs paraphernalia, mopping urine and alcohol from our stairs and not carrying out any caretaking duties on the schedule.  The office will be fielding calls for our residents who were too scared to leave their homes last night.  If this was a one off then we would just get on with the clear up and try to pacify our residents. 

Unfortunately this is not a one off and it seems that every day we are sending photographs of graffiti around in the hope that someone will actually help us.  We never get as much as a call back!

‘The overall and immediate concern…is that tonight the situation will return and the residents on Bemerton will have to endure another frightening night in their homes.

‘We urgently require action today to prevent this situation escalating.  There are resources out there to deal with this type of circumstance and we need to pull them together today.   We all need to rise to this challenge and see it as an opportunity to demonstrate to the residents the effectiveness of the services we provide.’

There has been a wave of territorial graffiti along the Cally Road and the streets running off it in the last few weeks.  Some local kids are tagging ‘Cally’ and ‘Boston’ (the Boston estate) and N1, N8 on all sorts of things- mainly the areas white walls, estate signs and portals. 

It’s all a bit mindless – a human equivalent of dogs pissing on trees and will probably go away in a while.  But it is annoying while it happens and expensive to clean up.  It started on the Cally around Freeling Street, then spread up Blundell and Brandon roads. There was a big outbreak up Richmond Avenue in the last few days.  Islington has an excellent but under resourced environmental crime team, let’s hope they are on the case and the vandals grow up a bit.