Strong Local Voice, Strong Local Champion

Sunday Times: Bruised Britain Makes a Stand

On the morning of Sunday October 7, 2007, the biggest concern for Liz Walker and her husband Paul was a leak in the shower. They had been happily living in and renovating the house they had bought on the Penhill estate in Swindon for 14 months: but a knock at the front door was to pitch the Walkers into a nightmare that has ruined their lives and left Liz an emotional wreck.

The knock was a neighbour's daughter come to tell them that their car, a silver Skoda Octavia, had been damaged. The back window had been smashed. "It looked as if it had been punched, over and over," says Liz. "Whoever did it had injured themselves and there was a trail of blood on the ground and on the pavement."

Paul, who works at the Defence Academy of the UK, an establishment responsible for postgraduate education in the forces, and who is a warrant officer in the Territorial Army, began following the trail which led to a neighbouring street. As he stopped outside the house where the trail ended, an aggressive-looking young man - Patrick Hanratty - came out. "I bet you think it's me that's done your car," he said.

Paul replied that he was going to call the police - and did. "Within three-quarters of an hour Hanratty and three mates were outside the house, shouting abuse and boasting that they'd driven three families off the estate and they'd do the same to us, they'd burn us out," says Liz, 46.

"A neighbour said, 'You're either very brave or very stupid, no one calls the police on the Hanrattys'. Incredibly, I'd never heard of them, though they lived only 200 yards away. So I looked on the internet and as I did, my heart sank."

Antisocial behaviour - of which the Walkers had just had their first taste - is a curse blighting estates up and down the country, where a majority of law-abiding people live in fear of attracting the attention of the aggressive, foul-mouthed few.

If the reaction to our story last week about Asher Nardone is anything to go by - she is the mother of a disabled son whose life on an estate in Poole, Dorset, was made a "living hell" by a family who smashed her car, attacked her house and verbally abused her - antisocial behaviour should be at the top of every MP's agenda.

An avalanche of letters - some simply addressed to "Asher, Poole" - have cascaded through her letterbox and she has been overwhelmed by messages of support on Facebook. Many people have offered not just sympathy, but also help.

The issue has prompted a passionate debate on our website, which has received almost 200 posts, many outraged on Asher's behalf but many others offering considered analyses of the causes and consequences of antisocial behaviour or describing similar experiences that have shaped their lives.

The futility of trying to stand up to persistent yobbery seemed to be reinforced by a recent court case in which a 71-year-old disabled widow, Renate Bowling, was prosecuted for assault after prodding a 17-year-old boy in the chest with her finger. Bowling had suffered months of abuse from youths in Thornton Cleveleys, near Blackpool, and confronted the boy after stones were thrown at her house.

In their conference speeches, both Gordon Brown and David Cameron had a shot at reassuring voters about antisocial behaviour. Brown announced an increase in the number of family intervention projects, in which parents who "let their kids run riot" will be ordered to accept counselling or could lose their right to benefits. "Whenever and wherever there is antisocial behaviour, we will be there to fight it," he said.

Cameron spoke movingly of Fiona Pilkington, who killed herself and her disabled daughter after years of torment from a gang. Youths taunted her children and threw stones at her house. Pilkington had "given up" calling the police because her case was regarded as "low priority".

"When I first read her story in the paper I found it difficult to finish - it's one of the saddest things I've ever read," Cameron said. "Just think about what we allowed to happen here in our country. This goes deep and it's been going on for years. It is about a breakdown of all the things that are meant to keep us safe ... a breakdown of our criminal justice system. This all needs to change."

Despite the government's many initiatives - Safer Neighbourhoods, the Respect agenda and so on - those who live on Britain's estates seem to have little faith in the authorities' ability to protect them. In the government's most recent Crime and Communities review, when asked what more could be done to protect people who have witnessed or been a victim of a crime, the vast majority of respondents chose "protection from intimidation/reprisal", followed by "more/better support".

Both were things the Walkers could have done with once they dared to "grass". Their house came under a near-daily bombardment of stones and eggs. A brick came through a window in the early hours, fireworks were placed against a door and they were verbally abused on the street. Liz, who worked as a PA at a financial services company and says she was "fully capable and loved the fast pace", soon found herself scared to leave the house in the morning in case she came back to find it a burnt-out shell or was attacked on the way to the bus stop (which did eventually happen).

She found herself bursting into tears for no reason and could not concentrate on her work. So, finally, she left. "I ended up on antidepressants," she says. "I'd love to know what all this has cost. It's cost us thousands in lost income but just think about the cost more generally: to business in terms of my days off, to the NHS in my doctor's appointments, the courts and the police time, the cleaning up of vandalism on the streets, all because this was not stopped before it started."

The Hanratty family were already well known to the authorities and were under threat of eviction for threatening behaviour to other neighbours when they turned their attention to the Walkers, it was later said in court. Patrick Hanratty, 19 at the time, was convicted of threats to kill and contravening the Public Order Act. His younger brother, Thomas, then 18, received a caution for damaging the Walkers' car. The family was evicted in May 2008.

But trying to collect evidence about them was "a joke", according to Liz. Michael Wills, her MP, "was fantastic and fought tooth and nail for us". The local council was a different story.

"I looked up their antisocial behaviour policy and it looked great," says Liz. "It said, 'We can offer support tailored to the individual', including recording equipment. I told them later they ought to tear it up and recycle it as toilet paper. When we needed recording equipment to monitor what was going on at our house, they didn't have any. The council had paid for mobile CCTV cameras but we had 'the wrong kind of lampposts' to fix them on to.

"And so it went on. When we went to court, the special waiting room for victims was locked and no one could find the key so we had to sit in the main area with the accused. And the case was adjourned four times anyway as the other side kept saying they didn't have a solicitor."

Liz, who has since offered help to other victims of antisocial behaviour, even undertaking a roving patrol with her husband outside one victim's home, has posted a petition on the No 10 website urging the government to improve the support network for victims of antisocial behaviour.

In Liz's case, despite the stresses, taking a stand seems to have been a success. She has had lots of support and was greatly cheered recently when she was in her front garden and heard something unexpected: "It was a neighbour telling a kid to get off someone's hedge. There was a time when you couldn't cross the kids round here."

For Asher, things are different. On the face of it she had more backing from officialdom. Annette Brooke, her MP, wrote to us after last week's article, pointing out that since she first met Asher last January she has discussed her case with the police and written "a whole host of letters and e-mails" on her behalf to Poole Housing Partnership, which manages the houses on Asher's estate, and Poole council.

Ian Cooke, acting community safety and community development manager for the Poole area, said Asher had been given a fireproof letterbox and had laminated film put over her windows as protection from missiles, had been given CCTV and had a driveway with heavy gates built to enable her to get her car off the road.

"Asher and two other neighbours stood up and did not tolerate the bad behaviour and in doing that they helped us," he said. "In general, in the area, antisocial behaviour is declining. Things have improved."

Yet Asher still feels intimidated and fears reprisals whenever she speaks up and the online debate served only to highlight how the issue can divide communities. Self-confessedly feisty, Asher admits she became an irritant to everyone from Jacqui Smith, then home secretary, down as she pursued her tormentors, the Hambridge family. Like the Hanrattys, they were evicted from their home in February 2007.

The Hambridges' oldest daughter, Danielle, joined in the online debate last week. "sitting here reading all your comments you lot dont know asher and what she is like i am miss hambridge and for all u lot sticking up for her there is two sides to every story and it was 3 years ago get over it dont judge us," she wrote, adding "asher should not of done this it is all because of that poor woman [Fiona Pilkington] and she has got to poke her nose in every time antisocial behaviour is said in the news or paper she knows what she is doing and she wants a reaction from us but she aint going to get one so i suggest she just leaves it all alone and gets on with her life and looks after her boys properly she moans all the time that its hard having 2 try having 5 children and a single parent".

Kathryn Kerr, one of the neighbours who was harassed and who also pursued the Hambridges to court alongside Asher, surprisingly came to Danielle's defence. "The family were not ideal neighbours and after the eviction there was a spate of criminal damage, but nothing has happened recently," she said. "Asher has embarked on a one-woman crusade.

"I'm not friends with the Hambridges. I don't support them, but I think we should let them be. If we see each other in the local shop we pretend we don't know each other. Losing your home is a significant thing to happen."

The sad thing is that it may not be just the Hambridges who end up losing their home: Asher, who has long refused to leave the Bourne estate because she has done nothing wrong, has finally had enough.

"I'm never going to feel safe here," she says. "I don't like to walk alone, even to post a letter. The atmosphere is destroying my boys. I've never wanted to leave but, suddenly, it seems inevitable."