50 violent crimes a week in Weston - up by 43% in four years

11.58.42am BST (GMT +0100) Fri 7th Jul 2006

The fight against crime is at the top of Mike Bell's list of priorities

The number of violent crimes committed in Weston-super-Mare has risen by almost 50% in just four years - warns Weston?s Prospective MP Mike Bell.

The Liberal Democrat will be calling for urgent action at his party?s regional conference this weekend.

The shocking new figures have been revealed in information provided by Avon and Somerset Police and show that overall crime levels in the Weston-super-Mare policing sector rose by 5.8% between 2002/2003 and 2005/2006 to more than 10,000 offences. However, violent crimes have shot up by 43% - from 1,764 to 2,523, now making up almost a quarter of all recorded offences.

Mike Bell will be proposing a motion to the Liberal Democrat Regional Conference in Wimborne this weekend condemning the Labour Government?s record on crime and calling for urgent action to tackle violence on our streets.

He said: "The fight against crime and disorder is at the very top of my list of priorities for Weston-super-Mare and our villages.

"50 violent crimes are recorded every single week in the Weston-super-Mare area - and all the signs are that situation is getting worse. We are seeing more assaults and drink fuelled aggression than ever before. Scandalously, we are also seeing the detection rate for violent offences fall through the floor. 90% of violent crimes go unsolved, the vast majority of perpetrators unpunished.

"Weston-super-Mare and our villages are fortunate to have relatively low levels of crime. This is a safe place to live. We have a good local police force and North Somerset Council is leading the way in tackling violence through schemes like the StreetSafe bus, CCTV and alcohol free zones.

"However, the trends on violent crime are alarming. The Government has singularly failed to tackle the problem or to provide the resources for our police and local councils to do it for them. We need tough action against those landlords who encourage drunken violence in our town centre. We need tough sentences for those that commit violent offences and acts of anti-social behaviour. We need to be clear that we support the human rights of victims of crime and law abiding citizens over those of the perpetrators.

"In Weston groups of community-minded citizens, many of them senior citizens like those in Grove Park recently, have had the courage to take on and defeat the hoodlums. It is about time that the Government did the same."