Less talk and more action, Lambeth council told

12:13pm Tuesday 19th February 2008

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Ex-gang members turned youth workers have slated parts of Lambeth Council's strategy to tackle gang culture, calling for more action and less pen pushing.

Six months of research was discussed at a gang summit held in Oval last Thursday - a year to the day after 15-year-old Billy Cox was murdered in Clapham.

The report, compiled by Lambeth Council, revealed children as young as 10, nicknamed "tinys", are involved in gangs and identified 27 youth gangs in the borough.

It also exposed the PDC (Poverty Driven Children or Peel Dem Crew), which boasts 2,500 members, as the most dominant gang in the borough and highlighted the Tulse Hill estate as one of the gang hotspots of Lambeth.

An increase in gang-related crime on the West Norwood estates and in Crystal Palace was also revealed in the report.

Proposals put forward at the summit to combat gang and youth crime in Lambeth included:

• Creating an intelligence gathering unit to target young criminals.

• Launching a hotline for parents who are worried their child is involved in crime and extending youth club opening hours.

• Investing an extra £1.75m in youth services in 2008
• More training courses and a borough-wide expansion of the award-winning X-it programme, which works with young people at risk of becoming involved with gangs.

But former gang members who are now youth workers for the programme said too much money and time had been spent on research and consultation.

"It's time for action," said Bianca Waite, 19, from Brixton who expressed her view that police "need to go back to basics" to rebuild relationships with the community.

Fellow X-it youth worker Hayley Littek, 20, criticised the intelligence unit idea as "just a move towards identity cards".

"All they're trying to do is catch us all in a trap where they know everything about us. No one wants it," she said.

The young people at the summit said anti-gang programmes like X-It should be offered to more young people, hopefully before they get involved in crime.

Lambeth Council leader councillor Steve Reed, said: "It's not good enough to leave our young people at the mercy of violent gang leaders. If we do that we're giving them a one-way ticket to a bullet or jail and along the way they will cause tremendous disruption.

"Too often Lambeth is portrayed as being at the heart of the problem. Today we are saying it is at the heart of the solution."