§ Mr. DevlinTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the progress of the safer cities initiative and the ban on drinking in public places.
§ Mr. John PattenThe experimental byelaw in Stockton-on-Tees, which makes it an offence to drink alcohol in designated public places, came into force on 5 April. The byelaw is in force in five other local authority areas—Bath, Coventry, Restormel (Cornwall), Rushmoor (Hampshire) and Scarborough—and will be in force in Chester shortly. The experiment is due to run for two years and will be closely monitored by participating local authorities, the police and the Home Office. Preliminary results are encouraging. The byelaw has been shown to be popular in most places and public drinking on the streets has largely stopped: the relatively few number of police requests to desist have almost always been heeded. There have been just six prosecutions, three in Bath and three in Coventry. A Home Office crime prevention unit paper containing the results of a survey, of Coventry city centre users, on the byelaw has recently been published. The survey shows that nine out of 10 users of the city centre who were questioned welcomed the introduction of the ban.
The safer cities programme is making good progress. Three projects are fully operational, at Bradford, Nottingham and Wolverhampton. They have already started crime prevention work there, most of it improving physical security but some directed to lessening the fear of crime and to preventing offending by young people. Projects at Lewisham and Birmingham begin this month. Five further projects are due to begin operating by the end of September, and six more by the start of the new year.