Fly-tipping and drug users plague residents despite council effort to clean up alley
A fed up resident has been fighting back against persistent fly-tipping and drug use on her street, but says that constant nuisance behaviour 'grinds her down'.
Annie Valentine, from Blackpool, has had her scooter 'hot-wired', and has faced verbal abuse after confronting drug users in the alley behind her home - but she is determined to clean up Dainsbury Place to make it a nicer place to live.
Annie Valentine, from Blackpool, has had her scooter 'hot-wired', and has faced verbal abuse after confronting drug users in the alley behind her home - but she is determined to clean up Dainsbury Place to make it a nicer place to live.
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NewsTranscript
00:00It grinds on you, if you know what I mean. I'm always, I hear a noise and I have to get up.
00:06So when you live with it all the time, it's not low-level crime, not in my book.
00:13I hear a noise and I have to get up, you know, I see what they're doing.
00:17Are they going to wreck my flower display out front?
00:20Are they going to take my plant pots that I've put out to make the street nice?
00:24With me being on the end house, I can hear everything near the gate and I do sit out in my garden a lot.
00:30So I hear if there's somebody trying to open the gate.
00:34I went out and there was a man and a woman and she squat down and I said, what are you doing?
00:42And she says, I'm having a pipe but I've lost my crack.
00:47It's horrible, children play on the street and you've got grown adults trying to do drugs at the side of the house.
00:56And not just marijuana, it's, I've lost my crack.
01:01Everything gets reported and the police have been good to be fair.
01:05They've been really, really good and often they walk around and knock on you, you're alright and you know, so that's really good.
01:11And they keep telling me to be careful with everything but I'm a tough old Yorkshire woman, me.
01:17If we don't stand up to these people, they've won and they're going to carry on doing it.
01:23So, you know, it's like I said, if you don't want to be on my camera phone, don't come down to my house and do things that you shouldn't do.
01:33It's simple.
01:34When I first moved here, I couldn't get access to the back of the garden because of all the rubbish.
01:43I mean, we're talking mattresses, human faeces, we're talking everything that was there.
01:49And no way could I have got my scooter around into the back.
01:53Around about tea time, I heard a noise and the dogs were barking and I went out and my scooter, the front panel had just literally been ripped off.
02:03They'd broken off the wing mirrors and just threw them.
02:07They tried to hotwire it, so I had to get it repaired.
02:13I mean, that wasn't cheap, it was £160.
02:17Even though we had CCTV footage, it was never found.
02:23But, you know, so I can get my scooter in the back now, but I should be able to leave it out the front because it would be so much easier for me
02:33because now I have to get it out the yard, down the ramp, go, get off, open the gate, shut the gate.
02:40And it's just effort, effort that I don't have.
02:43I have severe fibromyalgia.
02:47I have chronic fatigue syndrome.
02:51I have osteoarthritis in my spine, my hips, my knees.
02:57I did make a few phone calls.
03:00It took a couple of days, three wagons, loads of guys, and they cleaned everything and it was lovely.
03:09But now there's glass being smashed again by the kids and there's stuff being dumped.
03:16And people, when they're moving out, they're dumping everything or they fill other people's bins up.
03:23It's like the recycle, the blue bin, they fill it up with black bags.
03:27That's not recycle.
03:29We've got rats around here, definitely.
03:33The councillor lady, no wonder there's rats, seeing what she's seen.
03:40But yeah, and they're not little rats, they're big buggers.
03:43They're really big buggers.
03:45Is there ever a time when you think, oh, you know, it's too much effort to report things?
03:52Yeah, yeah, but then I just tell myself to give my head a wobble and not be defeated.
04:00If I don't do it, and the people around that are trying to help, it would be still the same.
04:10So if I can deter and get a couple of people arrested for doing drugs openly, candidly, in the morning as well,
04:21then if that's going to be some kind of a deterrent, then so be it.
04:27But I'll never give up.
04:30I'm trying to make the streets nice and everything, and I think we'll all succeed.