Crime in Shirebrook-2019 summary

The image represents the number of crimes in each town in the district with a breakdown by months.

NOTE: the numbers representing the population are divided in two categories: the population according to the 2011 Census and population of residents entitled to vote in the most recent elections.

When I talk with people living outside Shirebrook, I often hear them say that Shirebrook is a dangerous town. High crime rate, street gangs looking for trouble. As a resident of Shirebrook, I must say that I have a totally different experience.

When I was looking for a place to live, I would often check www.police.uk to see how safe is the area where there was a house for sale. Based on the information found on that website, I chose Shirebrook as my home. Since I moved to Shirebrook, I have never experienced any criminal behavior and my neighborhood has always been quiet and peaceful. Nevertheless, when I talk to the older residents, I have an impression that they don’t feel as safe here as I do. At some point I also started to doubt my feelings. Indeed – since I moved to this area, I stopped checking the police.uk records and when I went to that website again, it turned out, to my despair, that Shirebrook has recently plummeted from the first place to the bottom place in the ranking of the safest towns in the area.

I don’t know whether any of my readers were at the meeting with the Town Council after the disgraceful incident in front of a Polish store. Already then residents signaled that the situation was bad and that the Council and the police should do something about it. I guess our fury at that meeting must have worked, because a new police station will open its doors any day now. Let’s hope that some of those twenty thousand policemen promised by the Prime Minister will be allocated to Shirebrook and our town will once again be at the top of the ranking of the safest towns in the district.

The truth is that Shirebrook has the highest rate of migrant, temporary residents who are not always registered as constituents or even residents. By opening the borders to European immigrants in 2004, the Labour Party did not introduce any procedures for checking their criminal record and it wasn’t until now that, by using Brexit, the Conservative party introduced a mechanism called ‘settled status’ thanks to which all non-UK born residents who have a criminal record (or those who are homeless or working illegally) will have to leave the country. Better late than never, right?

Yet another problem in Shirebrook is the crazy policy of Bolsover Council which allows to create an infinite number of ‘houses in multiple occupation’ (HMOs) – Shirebrook has the highest number of HMOs in the whole district. This in conjunction with lack of actions by STC in the past with regard to the residents’ safety led to the situation we are facing today. We have been asking for CCTV to be installed on the market square for many years. Instead, we have a new Town Hall… The statistics do not look very encouraging and the actions of STC and the police (if any, because I personally didn’t notice any) seem to have no effect at all.

I am starting to wonder whether there must be another tragedy in order for anyone to do something about it?

Sylwester Zwierzynski

Lead Photo by kat wilcox from Pexels