(interviewing residents about the problems): they went round to people's houses and met them ..., and talked to everyone and got a general idea of what the local concerns were,

(removing litter from the streets): this was followed up with other quite practical solutions like cleaning up the area, getting rid of debris in alleyways

In places where there've been serious community tensions - I mean Brickendon's a good example of this. There were 250 reported incidents there in 2009 ... often to do with neighbours and arguments, but criminal activity too, um and the police will tell you that if you leave residents to sort things out for themselves the number of incidents rises - it doesn't fall. So the local council realized that they had to do something, so they went round to people's houses and met them and their neighbours and talked to everyone and got a general idea of what the local concerns were. If there were extended families involved, they looked at those particular families more closely and all the relatives and got some of the family intervention services to talk to them. And there were some very positive results. I mean, you can pick out the hotspots - you know, the main areas for crime but the hotspots don't tell you what causes the crime in the first place and so don't address the issues. So this proactive, more direct approach by the council worked well. And this was followed up with other quite practical solutions like cleaning up the area, getting rid of debris in alleyways and just making the place somewhere more agreeable - more liveable.