A special task force is to be set up by Boston Borough Council to examine concerns around after-hours anti-social behaviour.
The task and finish group will look at issues with the night-time economy in the town and throughout the borough.
There have been long-standing public concerns about street drinking and resulting anti-social behaviour.
Tuesday’s (July 30) meeting of Boston Borough Council’s environment and performance committee, which agreed to set up the task and finish group, heard that latest figures from Lincolnshire Police show that fewer street drinkers are being reported in the Boston drinking control zone.
While the statistics alone do not propose that problems with street drinking in the town have gone away, they do suggest that it is on the decrease.
Police figures show that so far in 2019 only 11 incidents of street drinking were reported by the public. A typical day sees up to 100 calls from the public reporting all types of non-emergency incidents.
There were no street drinking referral requests from the police to Boston Borough Council’s anti-social behaviour team for Public Space Protection Order (Alcohol) letters to be issued between November 2018 and March 2019.
The police have said that the rewards have been reaped from a purge on street drinking during last summer and that officers continue to proactively deal with street drinkers when they come across them. Most of these have been found to be homeless, so referring them for warning letters is not viable.
However, concerns by the public continue, especially expressed on social media, often sparked by a photograph showing isolated instances of street drinking in the town’s alcohol control zone (the PSPO area), alcohol-related littering or other anti-social behaviour.
The council uses the latest available legislation to control consumption of alcohol in a zone in the town centre and the anti-social behaviour team acts on referrals from the police.
