Stroll through the historic market town of Bridgwater, Somerset on a quiet weekday and you’ll be seduced by its old-world charm. The streets are lined with grand Victorian architecture, including a bustling library. Stop for a pint at The Fountain Inn overlooking the River Parrett and the friendly locals will greet you with a soft West Country burr. This week there’s even a market show celebrating local traders.
Its location just off the M5 also makes it the economic epicentre of the region, with the new £30bn Hinkley Nuclear Power Plant less than 30 minutes’ drive away.
But for all its merits, Bridgwater – like many other towns in the country – has a dark side that drags it down. It is plagued by petty crime and antisocial behaviour.
In recent years the shops have been plagued by youngsters who steal with impunity – often wearing frightening masks and some with knives. And if you stand at the bottom of the high street, even before the bell of St Mary’s parish church strikes midnight, you will find the menacing presence of a dozen or so men – some homeless or in halfway houses after recent release from prison. They generally hang around and drink, and have been caught openly taking drugs.
These threats to both shopkeepers and residents have become so widespread that the city is slowly being destroyed.
Bridgwater is therefore a textbook example of what Home Secretary Yvette Cooper calls an area plagued by “silent crimes” – public nuisance, theft, shoplifting, assaults. These are crimes that go unreported but cause a great deal of misery to society.
At the Labour Party conference this week, she promised to crack down on such behaviour, investing in 13,000 new police and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), as well as guaranteed local patrols.
She also said police would be given the power to target persistent offenders with “respect orders” – a new form of ASBOs – which would allow them to keep offenders out of city centres.
A new specific offence will also be created for assaulting a shop worker, following an extensive campaign by shop workers union USDAW and the Co-op.
In Bridgwater, this may be too little, too late. Some independent shops have closed altogether and stand empty, while others – such as Boots – have boarded up their windows with plywood, the glass recently smashed by local youths. One local tells us that he doesn’t take his toddler into town for fear of violence or swearing.
“Bridgwater is a great place to live and the people are great,” said Ashley Fox, the town’s Conservative MP. “But as in so many other areas, antisocial behaviour is a huge problem. “We need to end the culture where people are given benefits to spend on drink, without getting the help they need to kick their habit or hold down a constructive job. “Men loitering on the streets are unwelcome to both shoppers and businesses. If the Home Secretary is prepared to tackle this scourge, that’s great, but it has to be more than soundbites in a speech. We need to see improvements on the ground.”
Assistant manager Deacon Greenwood of Coffee#1, a café halfway down the main street, is also sceptical about the approach.
“Crime has been out of control for a long time,” he says. “The homeless are a big problem. We used to let them use our toilets, but then we found needles in them, so we stopped. Now they only poop on the side of our coffee shop, because the city hasn’t opened any public toilets. It’s terrible.”
He adds that the gangs of teenagers who attack the shops sometimes wear masks with smiley faces to make it even more sinister.
“We all know who they are,” he adds. “I know the names of some of them. But nothing is done because they are young – 13 or 14 or something. They came in here last week and trashed our top floor, kicked things over and swore at the staff. The whole town is devastated by it and I do notice that new shops are popping up just outside the town, far away from everything. I don’t know what the difference would be with new powers because it seems like these guys are getting away with everything because they are so young.”
It’s a similar story on the high street. Some shopkeepers even show us CCTV footage of brazen children – some still in school uniform – crowding behind counters to steal vapes. Others say youths are placing scaffolding poles on local train tracks or jumping on local trains and pulling the emergency cord.
For the manager of outdoor clothing store Millets, Carina Dimitrescu, the problem has only gotten worse since Covid. It’s been fueled by the cost of living crisis and the fact that children know they can get away with stealing. “Kids come in and just run off with hats and gloves,” she says, “or they bring a load of stuff to the till, swipe their card to pretend to pay and then run off. Homeless people also come in and steal North Face jackets and sell them for a tip to relieve themselves. I used to call the police but I don’t do that anymore except in the worst cases and even then they don’t come. The worst theft recently was someone stealing a whole shelf of T-shirts for about £400. I saw them in town the next day with one shirt on.”
Unable to prevent her stock from being stolen in broad daylight, Dimitrescu is left with few options. “If I see the children coming, I close the shop doors,” she adds. “Yes, we lose customers, but what can we do? And even if I close them, I know the children might kick them down, because they are violent.”
Like her local MP, she is not sure that a new approach by the Minister of the Interior will work. “The problems have been here for so long. Why is no one being prosecuted? Or even fined?” she asks. “Why is it legal to wear a mask on the street during the day? Why are the police so under-resourced that we don’t even report this? It makes me so angry. In Romania, where I come from, you don’t have this problem. I would like to grab these children and catch them. But then of course I would go to jail.”
The problem isn’t just in Bridgwater. According to the Office for National Statistics, 2023 was the worst year ever for shoplifting, with more than 430,000 cases recorded across the UK, up by more than a third on the previous year.
The British Independent Retailers Association (Bira) says one in two small businesses are affected by the rise in shoplifting. Meanwhile, the British Retail Consortium reported that violence and assault against shop staff has increased by 50 per cent – to 1,300 a day – in the year to September 2023.
But at least this town is trying to fight back. Every Friday afternoon at Coffee#1, the local council hosts a youth group to tackle antisocial behaviour. “There’s drinks and board games, and it’s a good idea,” says Greenwood. “But honestly, nobody comes.” Local businesses have been holding meetings to discuss the problem, because as one trader called Katie told the BBC: “The money just falls out [of our businesses] because we cannot afford to continue trading when visitor numbers have halved.”
In February, the local council took the relatively extreme decision to increase council tax to help fund local policing. It followed a 12-week consultation with frustrated residents, which found that 70 per cent supported an increase of £10 or more to boost police resources, with 45 per cent backing a £20 increase. In practice, the increase has meant that residents of an average Band D home – worth £68,000 to £88,000 – are paying £13 more a year.
Indeed, the police presence was in full force during our visit. At one point, four community officers were seen helping to rescue a man with dementia who had escaped from a local hospital, while another spent much of the day chatting to locals beneath the Victorian Corn Exchange. “I don’t know what powers the new Home Secretary can use,” one police officer said of the new planned crackdown.
“We already have powers to detain and relocate disorderly people. Often we relocate groups of men, but the problem is just relocated.” Despite the visible police presence, some are sceptical that anything is actually being done, especially to tackle the youth.
As one local resident in her early 30s said: “I tell my partner not to come into town, and certainly not to bring our two-year-old if she does. She came in once and just got yelled at, so it’s not worth it.
“I come to the city centre by myself sometimes and you see the police chatting and laughing with the kids who are causing the trouble. They do nothing. Come on a Saturday and you don’t see the police doing much when the gangs are vandalising shops. So even if they have new powers, what actually changes?
“Bridgwater used to be OK and there is so much potential here, especially with the nuclear power stations nearby. But now we try to avoid it all. It is so sad.”