Shocking events on the seafront this past week have put the spotlight on whether the City Council is doing enough to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour in Brighton & Hove.

As reported in The Argus, an unruly incident involving 200 people causing anti-social behaviour on the Hove seafront ended with a female police officer being assaulted and taken to hospital.

The week of anti-social behaviour continued with further incidents at Brunswick Square and at the Brighton Beach Basketball Court, where a member of the public was attacked.

Beach hut owners and lessees, who have once again seen damage done to their huts, have said ‘enough is enough’ and this week written to the Council to ask for action.

The Hove Beach Hut Association has asked that the council reconsiders its "ideological stance" against Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs) and introduces CCTV to monitor the build-up of large crowds and record antisocial behaviour.

These reasonable requests shine a light on how Brighton and Hove City Council has taken its eye off the ball on crime and antisocial behaviour in the City in recent years and is not utilising the powers it has available to it to make our city safe.

Public Space Protection Orders, which have been available for use by local councils since 2014, are a case in point.

PSPOs help councils deal with a particular antisocial behaviour problem in a particular area that is having a detrimental effect on the quality of life for those in the local community.  They can prohibit certain things or require specific things to be done making powers available for police and certain council officers to use.

Brighton and Hove City Council previously had PSPOs in place to deal with antisocial behaviour in parks and green spaces.  Certain parks that were trouble spots were named and had these PSPOs attached to them.  They were described as having a positive deterrent effect on antisocial behaviour by Council Officers.  They were initially brought in to help tackle unauthorised encampments in City Parks. 

Inexplicably, in December 2019, the then Labour Council allowed these Antisocial behaviour Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs) for our parks to expire.

Despite calls from our Conservative Councillors to reinstate the Public Space Protection Orders, Labour and the Greens have never brought forward a measure to do so.

It later transpired in questioning by our Conservative Councillors Robert Nemeth, Mary Mears and Dee Simson that Labour and the Greens have an ideological problem with PSPOs.

A similar ideology underpinned the Green/Labour Council’s recent decision to bring in a Homeless Bill of Rights for Brighton & Hove, which now provides a right to beg and erect a tent in every public space in the city.  We are the only city in the country with such a policy.

Through these decisions, Labour and the Greens are making it so much harder for the police and council officers to do their job in the City of enforcing the bylaws and protecting the public from antisocial behaviour.  It also puts our City out of step with neighbouring authorities such as Conservative Worthing which has PSPOs dealing with begging and overnight camping.

As suggested by the Hove Beach Hut Association, CCTV provision and monitoring is another area the council could and should be doing so much better for our residents.

Conservative Councillor Dawn Barnett recently made a call in this newspaper for the council to install CCTV cameras at the Council’s over-50s housing blocks to protect elderly residents from the growing problem of cuckooing.  Cuckooing is a practice where people take over a person’s home and use the property to facilitate exploitation- it takes the name from cuckoos who take over the nests of other birds.  The most common form of cuckooing is where drug dealers take over a person’s home and use it to store or distribute drugs.

These council-run over 50s blocks have some vulnerable residents in their 80s and we are aware of cases where they’ve been cuckooed two or three times. 

Until the Council gets on top of this drug dealing and cuckooing going on at it’s own Council-owned property we’re not going to get anywhere with tackling crime and antisocial behaviour in the city.

The Council has the facilities to implement Cllr Barnett’s suggestion with a Council CCTV control room which should be being utilised.

There is so much more our City Council could be doing to tackle antisocial behavior in the City.  Our City Council is actually going into reverse through the decisions it is making while the residents suffer.

ENDS.