Mean streets

Few cases appear to highlight the terrible consequences of agencies failing to work together as acutely as the recent deaths of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter Francecca Harding.

Last week’s inquest into the deaths revealed that Ms Pilkington, 38, killed herself and her daughter in a burning car after suffering years of abuse from youths on the Leicestershire council estate where they lived. The case raises serious questions about why police and two councils had not taken complaints from the family seriously.

Home secretary Alan Johnson lambasted the authorities for their failure to work together. ‘It is the police’s job, along with the local authority and social services and housing … to ensure that people are not driven to the kind of despair Fiona Pilkington was driven to.’

It doesn’t have to be that way. A pioneering project in east London is trailblazing the kind of partnership work the home secretary wants to see. In 2008 housing association Poplar Harca spent £200,000 setting up and running a centralised community safety office at its Poplar headquarters. It houses the Better Tower Hamlets Team - a 13-strong group of staff from Tower Hamlets Council, the police and social landlords including. The council chips in some of the rent.

The team is tasked with tackling anti-social behaviour in a community of 8,490 homes. This year alone it has seized £750,000 of class A drugs and closed down five cannabis factories, plus one producing cocaine. Metropolitan Police crime figures show a 10.2 per cent drop in the total number of offences during the past year in Tower Hamlets. That compares with a 1.6 per cent fall across London.

So how does the partnership work? Inside Housing spent a day with the team to find out.

On patrol with Inspector Trevor Robinson

Trevor Robinson is one of four police officers based in the Poplar Harca office along with other members of the BTHT team. They patrol the patch up to five times a month, often into the small hours. The team covers 12 estates, but patrols usually make first for an estate on Cottle Street containing 93 flats awaiting demotition and regeneration. Inspector Robinson estimates that there are more than 250 squatters in this empty building.

The block is covered in graffiti. ‘Squatters in peace’ and ‘God is squatting with us’ emblazon the masonry. Internal doors have been ripped off and refitted as front doors with new locks. ‘The problem is that even when you manage to remove the squatters, unless you target harden the building properly, then they’ll get back in,’ says Inspector Robinson, referring to the practice of rendering empty properties uninhabitable.

‘You also need to consider where these people will go. If you don’t have somewhere to house them, then they will just move on to another building. Executing a mass eviction requires a lot of organisation. We have to look at what resources we need and then how to target harden the building so that it becomes uninhabitable.

‘Unfortunately this property still has all the electric and water. You can’t just switch the water off to force them out. That’s a breach of human rights. Even if there’s no electric in a building, once they are in there they can apply to have the electric put back on,’ he says.

We approach another estate. There are no squatters here though. ‘We’ve had more success here. By filling the sinks and toilets with cement there’s nowhere for them to get rid of their water even if they have a camping stove for cooking.’

‘We’re not just dealing with squatters on the patrol route though,’ says Inspector Robinson. ‘All the guys are still going out and arresting people for other crimes. We also do truancy patrols.’

He adds that this is the closest partnership he’s worked on in during 20 years of policing.

A day in the life of Jamie Lock

Jamie Lock is a tenancy enforcement officer at Poplar Harca

‘I’ll generally start my day at around 9am but it can be much earlier. If there is a warrant for a drug search of one of our properties then I could start at six in the morning. We always go along with the police and other members of the Better Tower Hamlets Team. It helps them and it helps us.
‘If we’ve had a particular incident the night before on patrol, then the morning after I’ll be dealing with that. I’m out of the office a lot as well through the day. That’s an important part of the job. The residents appreciate that we’re out in the community with the police and they can see the difference it is making.

‘We control 12 estates and naturally it’s a very long day if you’re doing the patrol in the evening so we’ll always have a team dinner before we go out.

‘All our residents have our contact details so if they see anything they alert us and we can go round to the area straight away with the police. The residents have been really responsive to the work we’ve been doing. One tenant reported a strange smell in his block. When we went round it was clear that the smell was marijuana. We entered the flat and found loads of cannabis plants in every room. It was clear nobody was living there as each room was being used to [grow the plants].

‘Another [resident] phoned us to report people trying to break into one of our boarded up buildings. She was laughing down the phone at the fact they had been there for hours trying to get through the wooden boards to no avail.

‘We used to use the metal grills to keep squatters out of buildings but they’re easy to get through. You can bend them and get in that way. One squatter actually showed me how to open the grills using a piece of wire.’

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