Welcome for Police Ban on Outside 'Troublemakers'

12.56.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 1st Jun 2004

At the recent Police Community Consultative Group meeting there was a warm welcome to proposals from the borough commander, Chief Superintendent Edwards, that he would ban from the borough persistent 'troublemakers', using Anti Social Behaviour Orders.

He confirmed that on a typical summer weekend evening, 15 - 20,000 people come into the borough's town centres, 6000 into Twickenham centre, and many of these are no-residents who come for heavy drinking.

Vincent Cable said: "the Chief Superintendent made some popular and welcome suggestions about tackling anti social behaviour based on his experience in Camden. One is to use ASBO's to enforce banning orders on those who repeatedly come into the area to cause trouble. Clearly this is not a definitive solution since the problem moves somewhere else; but I welcome it as an indication that tough action will be taken. One of the difficulties we have is that many of the problems of anti social behaviour in Twickenham, Whitton and Hampton town centres are not caused by local residents at all and there have to be some legal remedies for the local communities trying to resist troublemakers"