Anti-social behaviour falls 76% in village estate thanks to youth project

"Eighteen months ago, the situation had got out of hand in Sedbury," a council street warden told The Guardian. Now, says the local mum behind a new youth scheme, "it feels as if we've all come out of a coma."

At the new Burysed Community Youth Project, 20 teenagers cluster around an Xbox 360 game, while others chat amiably to police and adult volunteers over cups of tea. The venue, on a housing estate in the Gloucestershire village of Sedbury, is open seven days a week until 8.30pm. According to its manager Mo Freeman, Burysed is now the heartbeat of the community.

A year ago, police were handing out antisocial behaviour warnings to some of the same young people. Now, reports of antisocial behaviour from January to April are down by 76% on 2007, say police. "For the first year ever, we didn't get a single call last Hallowe'en," says police community support officer Mark Robinson.

The village, near where the mouth of the river Wye meets the Severn, had developed what police term "acute" behaviour problems. Guns and hard drugs weren't involved, but fighting, vandalism, intimidation and aggression by young people were escalating. The Sedbury gang was waging war with a counterpart across the Welsh border, and a battle involving knives and baseball bats on the Wye bridge was narrowly averted when parents and police intervened. Now the two parties are on reasonably friendly terms.

Read the rest of this feature from The Guardian here