Personally Speaking: Have your say on town's anti-social issues

My Personally Speaking column in The Sentinel (22 October 2026)

HARDLY a week goes by without con­cerns about anti­so­cial beha­viour com­ing across my desk.

It lands in my inbox, I hear about it on the door­step, when I’m out and about in town and across our con­stitu­ency.

Local people want our com­munity to feel safe and wel­com­ing, and they are right to want that. But let’s be clear, they also want to know that something is being done to make it hap­pen.

With that in mind, last month I launched my Crime Sur­vey, ask­ing local res­id­ents about the anti-social beha­viour issues that affect them most, which hot­spots cause the greatest con­cern, and what they believe would make a dif­fer­ence here in New­castle-under-Lyme.

I want to thank every­one who’s filled in my sur­vey so far, and all those who’ve sent me their con­cerns dir­ectly too.

Those responses and that engage­ment helps me to make the case to my col­leagues in Par­lia­ment, and to our local police and both the county and bor­ough coun­cils – depend­ing on who is respons­ible for each issue.

Sev­eral hot­spots have emerged from my sur­vey so far. Unsur­pris­ingly to many I’m sure, the sunken round­about has been men­tioned more than any other.

That reflects a run­ning theme that hot­spots are found on the pas­sage­ways and routes into the town itself, like the sub­ways and seat­ing areas.

The places people pass through every day to get to work and to shop on our high street – help­ing keep our local eco­nomy alive. I will con­tinue using my plat­form as our local MP to push those who can help get this sor­ted, to do so because ulti­mately, if people feel unsafe com­ing into our town, our com­munity and our local eco­nomy will never thrive.

People have also raised con­cerns about e-bikes and scoot­ers being used in ways that leave oth­ers feel­ing unsafe, par­tic­u­larly through ped­es­tri­an­ised areas.

If you’ve seen this, please tell me where and when, as spe­cific details help the police to act.

I’ve had reports in Lyme Val­ley, up and down the A34 and across Chester­ton and Crackley already.

The impact of anti­so­cial beha­viour goes far bey­ond the num­ber of arrests and repor­ted incid­ents.

It’s about whether someone feels safe walk­ing home, whether a shop owner feels safe open­ing up with the pro­spect of facing the same prob­lems day after day, whether people feel com­fort­able going out to enjoy the pubs, bars and res­taur­ants in our won­der­ful mar­ket town, and why cer­tain places have become a source of con­cern for us as res­id­ents.

For local busi­nesses, that can mean staff mor­ale suf­fer­ing, cus­tom­ers going else­where and fewer people want­ing to spend time and money in the town centre.

For res­id­ents, it can mean avoid­ing cer­tain routes or chan­ging their daily routines because they no longer feel com­fort­able in places they should be able to use freely.

There are very real con­sequences for people’s lives and for the future of our com­munity.

I’m glad that earlier this year Par­lia­ment strengthened the powers avail­able to the police and to local author­it­ies to help them get a grip.

Amongst the many meas­ures in the Crime and Poli­cing Act, the change in the law so that police can seize vehicles being used anti-socially without first issu­ing a warn­ing is very wel­come and hope­fully will be a great relief to the many people who have raised their con­cerns about e-bikes and scoot­ers.

We must ensure we begin to see real change with the intro­duc­tion of these powers, and I’ll keep hold­ing those respons­ible for imple­ment­ing these changes to account.

The responses to my sur­vey are help­ing me to build a clearer pic­ture of where the prob­lems are and what res­id­ents want done about them.

I will con­tinue to use what you tell me to press for action from those respons­ible, whether that’s the sunken round­about and the sub­ways, or tack­ling the unsafe use of e-bikes and scoot­ers and deal­ing with other con­cerns.

New­castle-under-Lyme is a great place to live, learn and work and we have got to work to make it even bet­ter.

We have so much poten­tial and must get on with seiz­ing it – help­ing keep our com­munity safe helps us get one step closer to doing just that!

---

Fill in the Local Crime Survey