When do NAG's meet though? I'm not in the same area but I've hardly seen any information about mine, and what I have seen suggests they're doing things in the middle of the day, while I'm at work...

   You should get involved with your Neighbourhood Action Group which is very active in the area and voice your thoughts there as well. I am sure they are looking for active members of the community to help. What is good about the NAG's is that it involves the Police and Council. Therefore you have a captive audience. Give it a try.

   There are occassionally kids hanging around outside this shop. They ask you to buy cigarettes and drink for them. When you say no, they shout obscenities. If they are there, I avoid the takeaway, which is a shame because it is quite good. This is a common occurance in groups of little community shops in estates all around the country.

When nobody is using the shop or takeaway, the kids go in and out, in and out, in and out of the shop. How the people in Barratt Stores can keep an eye on them all, or stop them, I'm not sure. It is a useful shop for them to buy sweets and so on, and they are too young to work out for themselves that what they are doing prevents other business, and the shop could close. Their visits are like bees in a hive - they can't be buying things every time. The phrase "someone will get hurt" comes about because it is in kids nature to not know when to stop - they learn by pushing things to the limits - but if they aren't told to stop until they've gone well past the limit, they can't learn where that limit is, and start believing the police are evil and out to get them.

Selling them alcohol is illegal, and the shop rightly lost their license. Maybe the kids will find out, and go elsewhere. It might even help!

The police *could* move them on for "loitering", which is an offence, but they won't. They've started needing dispersal orders and curfews to even act on current laws. If you report the kids for shouting obscenities, which is an offence against section 5 of the Public Order Act, or possibly even using threatening behaviour which could go far as an assault charge, all that gets done is someone puts a tick in a box to count it as a report. No one will come out, nothing will get done.

I'm not saying this is a particularly bad spot. It really isn't. Mostly the kids aren't here and I can enjoy the takeaway. But not all kids are like this, and they aren't irretrievably lost. Without some work, some of those kids will become vandals in their early teenage years, druggies in their later teenage years, and criminals in their adult years. Kids don't *have* to act in this way, and we *can* stop them with parents, police and public working together... but we don't and we won't.