• LIVING and working here one quickly learns what streets to avoid after dark – the ones full of dark foreboding.

But visitors, tourists, and the unwary remain at a disadvantage.

Recently, however, there is no escape anywhere from anti-social behaviour, rough sleepers, beggars, aggressive “buskers”, pedicabs applying their own rules of the road and minicab drivers who consider it their given right to park anywhere, any time, without any penalty.

The West End has become the Wild West.

No law-abiding resident, business person, or visitor can travel anywhere without being harangued for “spare change” or by those asking “want any drugs?”

Then there are the charity chuggers, the urine stained footpaths, and a phalanx of aggressive beggars – particularly about Soho and St Giles.

Mobile phones and wallets are stolen with impunity. A major fast food outlet on Shaftesbury Avenue is reduced to employing door security officers at 7am every day. There is no visible policing and a recent Freedom of Information request to Camden Council revealed that the £250,000 raised via their late-night levy remains unspent nearly a year after its introduction.

Where’s all the promised additional policing, street pastors, taxi rank wardens, public toilets, cctv and litter collection?

Westminster and Camden need a joined-up strategy to deal with cross-border public disorder. The long-suffering, law-abiding, citizens are sick to death of paying to live in Dodge City.

KEN WRIGHT
Charing Cross Road, WC2