We're hearing how anti-social behaviour is impacting people across Lincolnshire
Findings show that people across Boston, Skegness and Spalding suffer from anti-social behaviour, making the community feel unsafe
We're hearing that anti-social behaviour is impacting people across Lincolnshire, making them feel nervous, anxious and scared.
It comes as new findings focused in Spalding, Boston and Skegness show that people's concerns over what could happen are making them feel unsafe.
Rich Collins has been working on the project and tells us more:
"What we found was the impact, what was really hitting people was people were getting really worried, they were anxious and scared and they were worried about what might happen, what could happen as a result of anti-social behaviour.
"What we really want from this is to take those examples and how it made people feel, and share it with other people - particularly actually people who may well be committing anti-social behaviour, so they realise the impact. Where they think it's something trivial, it is actually really impacting on some people."
Rich works for the community organisation Sortified, which supports people, communities, charities, social enterprises, and community organisations. We work alongside people and organisations to create ideas, tools, products, and solutions that make things fairer, better and more equal.
He added that some of these issues have simple solutions:
"In Boston, lots of people were complaining about people gathering in the market square, and actually the reason people were gathering in the market square was free wifi, so everyone gathered around there. The answer to that, is put more free wifi in and spread it out a bit, then people won't gather and you won't have people worried about why people are gathering."
The Safer Streets project worked alongside local communities earlier this year and were told that anti-social behaviour is a big issue to local people.
They were also told that the biggest issue of anti-social behaviour was around concerns for safety.
They found that the biggest causes of anti-social behaviour were based around substance misuse, and the behaviour of people.
Also, people want to see action taken against the issue, with the biggest impact being found to be anxiety, worry and anger.
The team are now wanting to share people’s stories and experiences, to help others and make the towns safer.
They are also looking for people to become Ambassadors, people who have experienced anti-social behaviour, and who are willing to talk about what happened and how it made them feel with other people. To find out more go to the Safer Streets Project.