Be on your best behaviour (From Stroud News and Journal)

Be on your best behaviour

COLIN Peake is on a one-man mission to make life better for Five Valleys' folk.

SNJ reporter David Gibbs went out and about with the district's new anti-social behaviour co-ordinator

PEOPLE could be mistaken for thinking things must be bad in the valleys if we need an anti-social behaviour co-ordinator.

"It's not necessarily that things are that bad," says Colin Peake. "It's about breeding a long term community, which is going to be better."

He is one of around 350 co-ordinators being rolled out nationwide on the back of new legislation to tackle anti-social behaviour.

The former Forest Green Rovers' operations director and 30 year county police veteran has just completed a blueprint document for dealing with anti-social behaviour in the district.

It will be presented to cabinet next month.

"As a civilian I'm looking at the whole spectrum of anti-social behaviour in all its widest forms," he says.

"One of the things in the Stroud area is that it's a rural area, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. One of the main concerns of the people who live here is how the area looks.

"We need to all work to ensure we try and keep the place as tidy as possible. There are approximately 110,000 people in the district. I'm the only co-ordinator. I can't do the job on my own."

A little less than a month into the job and he is already tackling the blight of fly posting. "Not just getting rid of it but stopping it at source," he says determinedly.

Colin Peake is a people person at ease with everyone from the youngster to the pensioner and anyone in-between for that matter.

He enjoys being out and about, "interfacing" with residents as he calls it.

We are at Tricorn House, which recently topped a BBC Points West poll for buildings people would most like to see demolished.

Colin is proudly showing off progress on an ongoing clean up operation intended to make the derelict building less of a magnet for vandals, errant youngsters, fly-tippers and car dumpers.

"The problem is that like any empty building it attracts the wrong type of people," he says. He called a stakeholder site meeting including residents, owners, the parish council and the fire service, drew up an action plan and put it into action.

"Most of my work is reactive because people complain," he says.

But it makes a difference. The place is being cleaned up and cameras being installed. Its owner suggests it may be turned into housing. The regeneration of a Stroud eyesore is well on its way.

That said, Colin believes it should never have come to this.

"When buildings are vacated by people there should be something put in to cover good maintenance of that building. People shouldn't just walk away," he says in a veiled criticism of many owners.

Our next port of call is an Ebley cul-de-sac where a community rift is growing over children's use of neighbouring green to play football.

Colin speaks to the children, adult residents and complainants in a bid to extract the whole story.

He will then go back to council, hammer out an action plan - a compromise to make life a bit better for all concerned.

"You've got to bet both sides of the story as co-ordinator," he says. "You can't take sides and you've got to listen. If you don't talk about it sensibly you don't cure the problem. "You've got to take the middle ground all the time"

He mourns the diminishing levels of tolerance in society and bemoans people's unwillingness to take responsibility for their communities resorting instead to reflex calls to the council or the police in the first instance.

"These are their kids," he says. "They're not from the Planet Zog."

At our last stop an elderly woman, who has lived in the same house for 50 years, complains about young vandals destroying her back fence and hedge.

The disintegration of traditional communities and the abdication of parental responsibility are what she blames for the woes of the world she now lives in.

"When we first came down here we knew everyone," she says, her distress obvious.

"Now, it's terrible. The people down here - they don't know what their children are doing." For Colin the solution is literally easier said than done.

"We have to be able to communicate with people," he says. "My father always used to say: "If you have to resort to violence you've lost the argument".

To contact anti-social behaviour co-ordinator Colin Peake call Stroud District Council on 01453 766321.