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Another sad day. We learned this morning of the death of Sandy Powell, a resident of Clapham Court sheltered housing scheme. After a long illness, Sandy died at the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital. He was a popular resident of Clapham Court and until he became ill took part in the activites of for block. Our condolonces to his wife Rene.

We attended the Police and Community Consultation Meeting (PCCM to those that like jargon) this evening. As usual, everyone had the opportunity to let the police know their feelings - and the police gave a report of what they had been doing in the past few months. This of course meant crime statistics! Of course, being in the city centre, the figures for our area are somewhat "lopsided". Residential areas do not expect so much "shoplifting" as we get! And car crime is somewhat higher because our area has many multi-storey car parks!

As we see it, the important thing is that in the detection rate, the percentage figure is increasing.

We were also told that the Chielf Contstable was well aware of the shortcomings of the "call centre" - whenever anyone in Gloucestershire telephones the police, the call is put through to headquarters and then callers wanting to report something are put through to "call management".

Sometimes, calls go unanswered for a very long time - we timed a recent call at just over 15 minutes from the time that the police answered the phone until call management answered!

Anyway, the Police are investing £1m (of our money!) in improving the situation.

Our area PCCM is fortunate in having as its chairman the Police Authority chairman himself, Brigadier Michael Browne.

Brigadier Brown informed us that the Gloucestershire Police are bucking the national trend and are recruiting and adittional 80 policeman this year.

Now that is good news! Fair enough, we have to pay for it, but one mathematician among the public present said that the cost per household was the same as buying an extra loaf of bread a week! (Not a supermarket "own brand" white label 10p cheapie, of course!).

We were asked to say a few things about our Police Information Point we have on the estate - and how it was progressing.

Youngsters were again out in force in Columbia Close this evening! Some were on bicycles and were riding round the paved areas at considerable speed. It is only a matter of time until someone is hurt - it was be an unsuspecting pedestrian, rather than a kid on a bike!

Anyway, one of our members telephoned the police. The youngsters were not impressed and said something to him. He went right up to the gang - and told them he was not scared of them!

Many people living in the Columbia Close area are thinking of asking for a transfer as they cannot stand living there anymore.

So much for the new "Crime and Disorder" Act, which was supposed to put a stop to anti social behaviour!

We met a Magistrate this evening and had an informal chat. Naturally, we "bent his ear" about the council's legal department and the time it took to get a "statutory noise" case to court.

It was a revelation what the Magistrate said! The council's legal department was too interested in getting too much evidence and forcing people to suffer for longer than neccessary, it was said.

Now where have we heard that sort of thing before. Was it from Judge Dick Greenslade, once of the Gloucester County Court, who grew up on a council estate?

Judge Greenslade and the Magistrate both insisted that everyone was innocent until proven guilty - and that everone was entitled to their "day in court". But both have indicated to us that they are aware of anti-social behaviour.