I am returning to the theory of broken windows, which I have mentioned a few times before.

The idea is that low-level crime and antisocial behaviour thrives in an environment which shows signs of neglect, and serious crime thrives in an environment where low-level crime is rife and tolerated.

The theory supposes that if a broken window is left broken it gives some signal that nobody cares, so nobody will care about a bit of litter, or some spray painting, then if an area has that general look of neglect it leads on to more serious vandalism and crime. At the very least it becomes an area where the fear of crime will be very evident.

The proposed answer is to have a zero-tolerance approach to the small things – fixing the broken windows as soon as they are broken – and everything else will look after itself in a sort of domino effect.

I’m not so sure that it is enough on its own, and needs support in terms of police visibility, but it sounds plausible to me.

Broadfield Barton, the shopping precinct in the neighbourhood, is a great example of neglect, as is the estate right behind it, known as the Courts.

The Barton is, yet again, the topic of a story in our local newspaper, with “angry shopkeepers” demanding that more is done to improve the area. Their problem is that the parade is managed by a company which can only fund that by increasing the rents and management fees to the shops to such an extent that they will all go bust.

The council has no involvement as this parade is privately owned, so while all the other parades in town are being improved in a long-term programme the worst in town will stay the same.

This is where a bit of imagination is needed. The newspaper story says that when the council were asked to help funding a spokesperson said:

We have to use council tax money wisely and cannot use it on someone else’s property, but we have been pushing the managers to do some improvement.

I can understand this postition, and when I was a councillor here I thought that the only answer was to keep leaning on the owners. In the last year I have been having second thoughts though.

Four or five years ago the council demolished the Barton’s car park, a multi-storey den of inquity, and the new car park has improved the look of the parade. As part of the works a few other improvements were slipped in, like removing part of the horrible canopies , putting some tree planters in and even putting a public noticeboard up. I can’t see why this cannot be done again.

We have a local strategic partnership called Crawley Together, and two of its main aims are improving the local environment and improving community safety. This body brings together lots of local organisations, and they could be made to understand that improving the Barton would contribute greatly towards their aims.

Members like the borough council, the county council and the police could decide that money spent to improve the shops would give more benefit to their areas of priority than they could get by spending that money on their own property. Obviously the owners of the Barton should contribute as much as they can, but they cannot afford to do the whole job.

Think of it like one house bringing down the whole street, where the owners are pensioners unable to carry out their own repairs but cannot afford to pay someone else. You can imagine the neighbours offering to mow their lawn while doing their own, just to improve the look of the whole street.

The current approach of continually putting pressure on FTD Johns is not practical. They can’t even raise charges without getting it approved by a panel which the shopkeepers sit on. They are not going to act like turkeys voting for christmas. At some point those organisations which are responsible for community safety are going to have to think about pooling their resources to help out, before the parade becomes a total no-go area.

At the moment it is, as the shopkeepers point out, shabby. But not only is the fabric of the parade shabby; the shops themselves are. I can’t blame them for that: under the broken windows theory a new shiny shopfront would soon get vandalised if the rest of the immediate area looks like vandalism is tolerated. Even if every single shop was renovated the overall look would be squalid, thanks to the ugly, leaking metal canopies.

I will be trying to get the Broadfield labour party to rally round and put pressure on Crawley Together to address this.

As far as the Courts are concerned, its the same sort of story. Mostly the estate is OK, its just a few things which make it look unfriendly and unloved – some dead streetlights, lots of abandoned shopping trolleys, and unrepaired damage in public spaces. Because none of this is cleared up it just gets gradually worse. If someone has an old mattress to get rid of it must be tempting to add it to the pile of crap at the end of the road rather than take it all the way to the tip. Not many people would start a pile of crap, but many more would add to an existing pile.

We have already been doing some work here with our collection of shopping trolleys, but its not an example anyone else has seen fit to follow. We will keep going though in the hope of reaching some sort of tipping point – an unfortunate phrase in the circumstances I know.

I’m not saying that policy discussions on identity cards, schools admission policies or the european common currency are not important, but it seems to me that its a bit pointless if we neglect the basics like the streets where we live.