Hello Hedge Enders.  This week, I’ve been thinking about the debate that’s been happening on this site regarding the introduction of Street Pastors to Hedge End. 

    For those of you who don’t know, Street Pastors come from a cross-section of what seems to be mainly Christian groups – I think you have to have been a church-goer in regular attendance over a twelve month period to be eligible to join – who, after initial training, target local areas that have been plagued with anti-social behaviour and try to get those causing problems to change their ways; the emphasis being placed on communication and support rather than punishment and censure.

    Although the background to the organisation is religious there seems to be no religious motive other than the urge to make local areas more pleasant to live in; a communal force rather than a spiritual one:  They’re extremely keen to make it clear no church recruitment is done by the pastors during any shifts they carry out.  They don’t work in isolation either, only targeting areas to patrol after consulting the council and the police.  They’re moving into Hedge End after successfully tackling similar problems in Fair Oak and other surrounding areas. 

    What really got my attention was one of the comments posted under the original article – and, I must admit, this comment mirrored my own initial reaction, so this column isn’t meant as a criticism of the comment at all:  Was this sort of approach really called for in Hedge End?  It seems such a quiet place to live. 

The problem with an area such as this, though, is we all live in relative isolation to each other and a lot of us like to keep ourselves to ourselves.  Although my address says Hedge End, I live in Grange Park, so I’ve no idea what problems there might be in the village centre or isolated areas such as parts of Shamblehurst Lane or the cemetery late on a Friday night (the sorts of places me and my mates would have hung around in before we could afford to start drinking in pubs).  I do know there are problems with late-night boy-racers on the roads around the retail parks because I can often hear the sound of their engines tearing it up, but, other than a bit of noise pollution, they don’t really have any impact on me.  It’s the same with the crowds of teenagers who sometimes gather around the local shops through the summer holidays – I know they’re there and I’m sure some people find them intimidating, but they’ve never caused me any trouble, so I don’t really give them much thought (but I wouldn’t want to do a late shift in Tesco Express while they’re hanging around).  

    Hedge End’s not really an area anyone would describe as a hot-bed of organised crime by any stretch of the imagination, either, yet I know of someone a while ago who answered their door to a pizza delivery they hadn’t ordered.  They explained there must have been a mistake and sent the delivery guy on his way.  A few minutes later he was back – he’d just been robbed at knife-point by whoever had made the bogus call in the first place; in broad-daylight in a fairly busy cul-de-sac as well.  There was also the recent spate of robberies in the car-park at Sainsbury’s.  Where there’s people there’s crime.  It’s as sad and as simple as that. 

    The other problem with anti-social behaviour in areas such as this is it sometimes doesn’t take much for life to suddenly seem really unpleasant in a street where only a few people are affected by what’s going on:  Where we lived before we moved to Hedge End, our house overlooked a communal green.  For the first few years we were there we didn’t have any problems.  Then local children started to use it as a football pitch.  Again, it wasn’t a problem because they were only seven or eight years old and, on the whole, didn’t cause any damage or trouble:  They’d even stop the game if people were making their way from their houses to their cars  or vice-versa.  Then, though, as they got older, the matches got rougher, they started to use proper footballs, and more and more kids from surrounding streets began to turn up, meaning the games didn’t stick to the green but spilled over onto front gardens:  Our next door neighbour was always out in her front garden, putting in plants, weeding, that sort of thing, and it just got totally trashed – sometimes while she was still in it.  On the few occasions she ever bothered to say anything, she got a mouthful from the kids and, a couple of times, rubbish thrown over her back-fence once it was dark. 

For us, it led to different problems.  We had a newish car and didn’t want to park it on the side of the road where it was likely to get hit by a football, so we started parking it on the other side of the road (all the parking in the street was unallocated and communal).  We ended up having anonymous notes left under the windscreen-wipers telling us proper neighbours would show respect and stick to their own side of the road.  This, it turned out, from a woman who was letting her children out night after night to kick our front garden to shreds.  Proper neighbours indeed.

    The worst thing about issues like these is they often become bigger than they actually are; they come to dominate your thinking while you’re at home.  You also start to feel really petty – there’s no way you want to spend a Saturday morning knocking on front doors to find out who left an  anonymous note under your windscreen the last time it got dark, but you don’t want to let it go either.  Worst of all, legally, you’re helpless.  If you complain to the council about anything in your neighbourhood whatsoever you have to declare it to any potential buyers if you decide you’ve had enough and want to move on.  And, really, who wants to complain about a bunch of kids playing football anyway:  Until you’ve got a load of fourteen year olds kicking lumps out of each other and swearing at the tops of their voices right by your front room window, it sounds like a really trivial thing.   

    So, all in all, I think the introductions of Street Pastors is probably a good thing, even though the demand might not seem all that obvious to most of us living in the area.  And, fingers crossed, if anyone around here is having problems with anti-social behaviour, let’s hope, combined with the police and the council, their introduction has a positive effect.