A Brixton estate is set to spend £17,500 installing CCTV to stop drug users from shooting up in stairwells and breaking into homes.
The City of London said 11 cameras will be installed across the Gresham Almshouses Estate in Lambeth in a bid to stop junkies using the estate as their own drug den. The cameras will cost £800 a year to maintain, council documents revealed.
The layout of the estate, with its open communal green and stairwells, has become a target for drug addicts who enter from Ferndale Road, the report read.
It said estate managers have been asking addicts to leave the site on a daily basis and are negotiating with the Met Police to increase patrols in the area after one of the vacant properties was broken into.
The report read: “As referred to earlier in this report there has been an increase of non-residents loitering on the grounds of COL Almshouses / Gresham Almshouses.
“The design of the scheme allows people to access communal areas, such as stairwells and loiter and take drugs in these areas.
“The [estate] manager is approaching these people daily to ask them to leave the site and is liaising with the local Safer Neighbourhood Team to increase patrols.”
The City of London, which runs 42 properties on the estate, is expected to fork out £14,700 for the installation while the Gresham Almshouses Trust could be asked to cover the cost related to the eight homes it manages on the estate.
In March, The City of London, which owns the estate, agreed to install CCTV after being told that addicts were “entering and loitering” in hidden areas of the housing block.
Gresham Almshouses area manager Marie Rene said installing CCTV was “the best option” as closing the entrance and installing more lighting would be costly and intrusive for residents.
She said: “Unfortunately, because of the layout of the almshouses, where we put the lighting, we don’t want it to affect the residents. We don’t want the lighting to go into their homes, so we’ve got to be careful about that.
“The problem is it will affect people’s properties unless they keep their curtains shut all the time, which we can’t ask residents to do.”
A visit by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) in April found the estate was wedged between a drug dealing hotspot and ad-hoc shelters for the homeless.
Residents told the LDRS they regularly witness dealers selling drugs on Ferndale Road, which runs parallel to the almshouses. They also said homeless people camped outside two churches around the estate at night.
The City of London is expected to approve the plan during a meeting on Friday, May 26.
A spokesperson for the City of London Corporation, which manages the almshouses as a registered charity, said: “Drug taking on the estate is completely unacceptable, and we are working with the local police Safer Neighbourhood Team to increase patrols in the area. We are also installing CCTV to improve on-site security.”
http://southwarknews.co.uk/news/crime/bermondsey-council-estate-plagued-by-terrifying-drug-dealers-and-users-residents-say/