Reinstate no alcohol zone on Chateau Gontier Walk
From "Share your ideas for Market Yard"
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As a local resident opposite the riverside, I really appreciate the work the town council have done over the last year to clean up Chateau Gontier Walk and make it a more appealing space (new planters, new bin etc).
However, we still get problems (especially in the Summer months) with certain types using the benches for drinking, drug-taking / dealing, playing loud aggressive music from increasingly large Bluetooth speakers, and leaving piles of empty cans and bottle all over the river bank. And with the removal of the toilets in market yard, they often relive themselves among the trees and flowerbeds.
Last summer this got particularly bad with one particularly charming chap returning with his mates day after day, blasting out aggressive drum and bass all afternoon and late into the night, drinking, smoking weed and openly selling stolen bikes.
The police could do little about it as they claimed no law was being broken.
At such times, my two teenage daughters and I can feel threatened and unsafe leaving our house and walking into town.
I dearly love the vibrancy and diversity of the town centre outside my window, and I’ve nothing against people enjoying a cider in the sunshine, but a small minority just openly take the p*ss.
The walkway used to have “no alcohol zone” signs up but these were removed when Somerset council took over from Mendip.
The reinstatement of such a zone would help to discourage such behaviour, make it feel a lot safer and give the police more ability to move people along when they are causing a disturbance there.
