12 September 2020
Thorpe Hamlet PSPO – Statement from Councillor Ben Price
Thorpe Hamlet councillors have been supporting residents of the Rosary Road area, who are members of the Old Library Wood Collective (TOLWC) in reducing the amount of anti-social behaviour in the area.
As a local resident asked a public question at a Norwich City Council cabinet meeting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWAp2B4VdKEThorpe Hamlet councillor, Ben Price made the following statement:
“The PSPO (Public Spaces Protection Order) is due for renewal this autumn and this would be a great opportunity to help local residents feel safer and reduce anti-social behaviour near their homes by extending the PSPO to cover street prostitution and kerb crawling in this area of the city.
“The local community initially called for added protection through a PSPO extension through our police safer neighbourhood action panel (SNAP) East meetings in November last year.
“Since that meeting, I have called on the cabinet member, Councillor Kevin Maguire, to use the intervening time to gather the necessary data to establish the validity of including this area of the city, which includes Old Library Wood, Rosary Road and Mousehold Street.
“I also attended the scrutiny meeting with the police and crime commissioner in February, where I set out a resolution, which was agreed by the committee, that cabinet would consider this extension idea and look at other council’s PSPOs to inform the renewal, but cabinet sent this back to scrutiny. The topic was then not selected for this year’s scrutiny work plan.
“As far as I am aware, no research has been undertaken by the council in looking at the potential of extending the PSPO boundary to cover this area of the city.
“The only activities currently covered by a PSPO in the city are street drinking and dog fouling.
“It’s time the cabinet took residents’ views seriously and took action to make them safer on their own streets.”
