Fear of crime is falling in county

Fewer people think drug use and drug dealing is a problem while those who believe anti-social behaviour in general to be a problem in the city is also down.

That is despite the fact official figures for 2009/10 showed the number of anti-social behaviour crimes across south Worcestershire, which includes Worcester, had increased from 608 incidents to 1,555.

However, at a meeting of Worcester City Council’s performance management and budget scrutiny committee Councillor Simon Geraghty, leader, welcomed the findings of the survey.

“This is a great result not only in terms of tackling real crime on the ground but tackling the perception around us,” he said.

“However good you are at getting crime down it is much harder to tackle the perception that people can go out and not be the victim of crime and I think we should welcome that.”

Overall, the number of crimes committed across south Worcestershire in 2009/10 fell by 2,100 incidents. The results of the Worcestershire Viewpoint survey, of which 5,581 valid responses were received, 10.8 per cent of the people asked thought anti-social behaviour in Worcester was a big problem compared with 14.5 per cent in 2009/10.

Coun Alan Amos, a Labour councillor for Warndon, was not convinced by the survey’s findings.

“In my experience people are more concerned about anti-social behaviour than ever before,” he said. “I think these figures give a misleading picture.”

The survey also showed that people who perceive drug use or drug dealing as a problem dropped from 24.4 per cent to 21.1 per cent.

There was a significant jump in the number of people who believe the city council and police are dealing with local concerns about anti-social behaviour – from 27.8 per cent to 41.8 per cent.

The only blip was that the number of people who perceive drunk or rowdy behaviour as a problem in Worcester went up from 22.5 per cent to 23.3 per cent.