The Meeting.

A short report on the meeting held on tuesday evening to discuss the issues around the recent incidents of anti social behaviour in the village  and ways to divert younger people from such activities in the future.

About 50 people attended the meeting facilitated by the parish council and held in The Lamb Inn Shed.  The meeting was chaired by the chair of the parish council and representitives of the police and mid devon district council and devon county council departments were in attendence.  police sergeant, Paul Roberts from the Tiverton policing team gave the background to the recent imposition of a dispersal order and explaining what the aims of the order were. This is to allow police to disperse people they consider likely to cause trouble before it starts. He reported that although there had been a sharp rise in reported  crime and anti social behaviour percentage wise in the months preceding the dispersal order, numbers remained small and overall the village remains a safe place to live,

The meeting then opened up to a general discussion around ways forward and there were a number of useful contributions from the floor. including from the few younger members of the community who attended, notably from Ben  Rice.  Ben  pointed out that much of the trouble had enenated from a slightly older group within the village and from their friends from outsude Silverton.   Other contributions concentrated on the provision of facilities such as the reconstruction of the BNX track and better use of the facilities of The Community Hall for youth activities.  A positive aspect of the meeting was  provided by some people with experience of youth work volunteering to help move things forward and to that end a contasct group was established.

On the whole, I thought that the meeting did about what could have been expected of it in being the start of a process rather then providing any magic bullet solutions.  With hindsight, I also think that the attendence of the police probably prevented certin issues within the village being discussed as openly as they might otherwise have been.