Graffiti has been sprayed around and on Ludlow Library and Portway. I understand this happened on Wednesday night.
If anyone has any information on this, please ring 101 or email ludlow.snt@westmercia.pnn.police.uk.
I don’t have any sympathy for young people or anyone else that vandalises buildings. But I do recognise that the limited activities and support for young people in our town increases the risk of antisocial behaviour.
We don’t know the circumstances of this attack but it does point up the urgent need to increase our support for young people in and around Ludlow. We run a youth club for younger people at the Youth Centre. We also employ detached workers to work with young people out at night. But since Shropshire Council reorganised the youth services, we have been unable to run regular drop in sessions for young people aged 14 and over.
The way Ludlow Youth Centre is run a classic example of the way Shropshire Council wastes money. It leaves me in perpetual anger. We get a grant of £10,850 to run youth services in and around the Youth Centre. But the building costs £31,350 a year to run, including £12,000 a year in cleaning costs. It is truly shocking that the council spends more cleaning the toilets than it does on youth services. Much of the cost of running Ludlow Youth Centre is unnecessary expenditure. It is typical of a council that has spent seven years failing to get a grip on its finances.
We are working on a complete overhaul of youth services in Ludlow but, unfortunately, that work has been delayed by my recent illness.
Yes, we do have a disgraceful decision by SCC to pretty well destroy the youth service and in tandem with this we have virtually nil police presence in the town. I have experienced two episodes of vandalism in the last two weeks. I have not bothered to alert the police; the police have neither the time nor the interest to think in terms of community well-being. It will not take too long for Ludlow to move from being a town in which its residents feel safe to a town where a state of lawlessness rules.
Thanks Joyce. I would advise you and anyone who experiences anti social behaviour to report it. I am not suggesting that the police will have resources to deal with vandalism or abusive behaviour. But if we don’t report and record asb, the police will say “it’s not much a problem in Ludlow”.
This is not the only vandalism going on.Shropshire Council have vandalised freedom of speech.
Youth services are the Cinderella Service, one of the first to be cut in austere times. This leaves an age range that needs guidance in how to behave, a place to go to drain all their excess energies, to develop their talents and ideas out in the cold. Boredom, negative peer pressures become rampant leading to not only vandalism but to more serious problems. They need guidance, leadership, somebody to believe in them. Youth services develop good responsible citizens. If free speech has been vandalised use this subject to start a debate to bring it back. Nothing like a provocative issue to start it off.