'Stigmatised' Swindon estate is anti-social behaviour hotspot
He wants to see the estate's reputation reversed: "One of the reasons people struggle in Penhill is because there's a reputation associated with being in one of the areas beginning with P."The pastor of Penhill Community Church believes that cleaning up and fixing things in the area would help to show it was loved. He is not the only one who feels like this. Christine, who struggles to walk, said "things don't get done", such as fixing pavements and cutting back hedges."I can't go out without someone being with me, in case I fall."
One of the ways a clean-up might happen is in the form of a big cash injection - Penhill has been named by Chancellor Rachel Reeves as a deprived area which will get up to £20m to spend in the community over the next decade.Local Labour MP Will Stone will be setting up community forums."I'm been told to get my skates and start working as quickly as possible."It has to be community-led."
Meanwhile, Police and Crime Commissioner Philip Wilkinson hopes residents will start to feel safer with more visible policing in Penhill.A Safer Streets Summer initiative has also just launched - not just in Swindon, but in Salisbury, Trowbridge, Chippenham and Marlborough as well. It means additional patrols in known hotspot areas and increased enforcement of public space protection orders.
Mr Wilkinson said: "Being safe and feeling safe are two different things, and I recognise those really valid feelings that some residents will have who live and work in those areas of Swindon."He added that they are working with others to "address the root causes of crime and gang culture".
Yvonne is worried about safety: "My family don't want me going out in the dark."Her and her friend Doreen told the BBC they see a lot of police cars, but would like to see police on the streets.Kerrie Barrett, from the Penhill Chronic Pain Group, is a bit more positive.She said lots of people do like living there because of a good community spirit.With the money, she said they could "help more people; the elderly, the people struggling with pain, young families are a big thing as well".Vicky Edwards is part of the same group: "For me, growing up in Penhill was always safe. There's not enough for the kids to do any more."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
43 minutes ago
- The Independent
Man gets 65 years in prison for killing Connecticut mom whose daughter remains missing
A Connecticut man was sentenced Monday to 65 years in prison for the 2019 beating death of his girlfriend, but their baby daughter disappeared at the time and remains missing. Jose Morales, 48, was convicted by a jury in April of murder and evidence tampering in the case of Christine Holloway, who he killed inside her home in Ansonia, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) west of New Haven. Their daughter Vanessa was 14 months old when Holloway was killed and relatives continue their efforts to find her. Police said in 2019 that Morales was a suspect in the girl's disappearance, but he was never charged. Several family members of Holloway spoke at the sentencing. 'What was done to my niece Christine Holloway is unforgivable and disgusting and that monster continues to lie. Where is Vanessa? How can someone be so cruel?' said Anna Rodonski, Holloway's aunt. Morales declined to speak at the hearing in Milford Superior Court. He testified at the trial that two intruders attacked Holloway with a crowbar and assaulted him before they kidnapped Vanessa. Morales also said he was high on PCP at the time. His lawyer, Edward Gavin, told the judge, 'It's an extraordinarily difficult case. It shows the ills of PCP and drug use in our society.' Before handing down the sentence, Judge Shari Murphy called the crime vicious and said Morales showed a careless indifference to human life. 'Mr. Morales, you are a dangerous person, a significant threat to society and you need to be removed from the community for a substantial period of time," the judge said.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
When will the BBC learn from its errors?
It was a bad day for the BBC. First an internal report into accusations made against the MasterChef presenter Gregg Wallace criticised institutional failures to stop him earlier. It upheld 45 alleged instances of making inappropriate and sexually explicit comments. He was also found to have been 'in a state of undress' on three separate occasions and of making unwanted physical contact on another. The upshot is that Wallace, who denied the allegations and says he has autism, has been sacked and will never work for the BBC again. Complaints about Wallace's behaviour on MasterChef were raised with the BBC as long ago as 2013 and then again in subsequent years. Yet he continued to present the flagship programme until November last year. Only when this newspaper published the allegations did the BBC act with characteristic tardiness. This has been ruinous to Wallace's career and an embarrassment to the BBC, once again questioning the rigour of the Corporation's protocols. The same can be said of the second report to land on the desk of Tim Davie, the director-general. This confirmed that the BBC breached its editorial guidelines by failing to disclose that the child narrator of a Gaza documentary was the son of a Hamas official. The report criticised the BBC for not being 'sufficiently proactive' with initial editorial checks, and for a 'lack of critical oversight of unanswered or partially answered questions' ahead of broadcast. The fact that the BBC was unaware of the Hamas background of the narrator's father is irrelevant. The point is that it should have been far more diligent in establishing the bona fides of the programme before airing it, given the sensitivities of the subject matter. Why was a child narrator being used at all other than to give a tendentious slant to the reportage? The report said this was 'inappropriate' and it is hard to understand how the BBC, with all its checks, balances and regulations, let it slip through the net. Once again Mr Davie is facing calls for his resignation, as he did after the BBC's failure to prevent the broadcast of allegedly anti-Semitic rants by the rap artist Bob Vylan at Glastonbury. He has promised to 'prevent such errors being repeated' but where Israel is concerned they keep recurring. For how much longer?
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Not priority to devolve youth justice in Wales says UK minister
A UK government minister has been accused of pouring "cold water" on the prospect of the Welsh government taking control over probation and youth Labour-led Cardiff administration has been pushing for further devolution on criminal justice - calls that Westminster colleagues have promised to Prisons Minister Lord Timpson has told a committee in the Welsh Parliament it is not "a priority" while the criminal justice system is "in crisis".Labour MS Jenny Rathbone said the comments were very disappointing. Lord Timpson says the criminal justice system faced "huge pressures" and there needed to be "stability" before "further changes" were considered. Under the system of devolution established in 1999, the Senedd and Welsh government have never had control over criminal reports, including one from the former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have called for more devolution on criminal justice including youth justice and the probation summer's Welsh Labour manifesto said the party would "explore" the devolution of probation "to enable them to be more locally responsive".It was planned as part of a strategic review into probation and added it would "consider" the devolution of youth to the Senedd's equality and social justice committee, the Prisons' Minister Lord Timpson told MSs that "we need to be in a much more stable position before we can think about further changes".Mick Antoniw, the former chief legal adviser to the Welsh Government, says there are "volumes of evidence" that devolution of probation "needs to happen and quickly".The Labour former counsel general told the committee that there was "no logical response to that other than we've had a decade of delay on actually looking at the enormous accumulation of evidence".Questioning Lord Timpson, he said: "What you seem to be suggesting is that we are going to go through that process of just continually looking at the evidence without ever really coming to a proper conclusion."Former Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price added: "Are you ruling out for the foreseeable future the full devolution of executive and legislative powers?".Lord Timpson said he wanted to "stabilise" a "bruised" service but added: "I'm not ruling anything out, I'm not ruling anything in. "What I'm focused on is trying to sort out the crisis in our justice system." After the meeting committee chair, Labour MS for Cardiff Central, Jenny Rathbone said the committee was "very disappointed"."The Welsh government has already started the groundwork to prepare because it believed there was a realistic prospect that these aspects could be devolved soon," she said."This is in stark contrast to Lord Timpson's evidence before the Committee today which seemed to pour cold water on the prospect."
