Street revamp ahead (From Borehamwood Times)

Street revamp ahead

10:14am Thursday 11th December 2003 in News

Shenley Road is to be given a revamp with almost £20,000 worth of new plants, a new crime-fighting committee and better maintenance.

A committee is being set up to represent shopkeepers, who have been frustrated by a lack of action from the police over shoplifting.

Many no longer report shoplifting, as the police rarely turn up unless the shoplifter is still in the store, and shopkeepers do not usually claim back the cost of the goods stolen, as this would push up their insurance premiums.

As a result shoplifting barely shows up in police statistics, and is not treated as a priority.

If, when consulted in January, a majority of shopkeepers agree to bring in the committee, it will become a campaigning organisation calling for greater police action.

Meanwhile the borough council has agreed to hand over almost £20,000 to pay for the road's tired old planters to be given a new lease of life, and the town council is to spend £3,000 every year keeping the planters in shape.

Before the new plants can be planted the old ones have to be dug out, and the planters have to be spruced up.

The planting should be complete by May next year, and Councillor Morris Bright, in charge of Hertsmere's anti-crime policies, said he hoped Shenley Road would feel like a more pleasant, safer place to shop, which would boost the town's economy.

Council officers will put plants appropriate to their surroundings in each planter, so that flowers will not be placed outside pubs where they would be vandalised. Sturdy plants will be put outside pubs instead.

Eileen Stanley, from the town council, has been campaigning for the planters to be given a new lease of life for some time. Several people had stopped her in the street to express support for the campaign, and asked when they could expect to see improvements.

She said the councils would decide what plants to put in by the end of January, and work would start on the planters at some point after then.

Some of the trees in the planters have already been cut back, as they had been blocking Shenley Road's CCTV anti-crime cameras.

Signs have been put up along the shopping street, to inform would-be criminals that they are being filmed.

f=GillSans condensedcwhitney@london.newsquest.co.uk