Richard Barker, a bike shop-owner in Castleford, was sick and tired of thieves targeting businesses in his town, with one violent thug even taking a hammer to shop windows.

Castleford in West Yorkshire, the birthplace of sculptor Henry Moore, was a town in decline after the collapse of heavy industry. Street-drinking and low-level antisocial behaviour was blighting the high street. Despite a £24m Town Fund award from the Conservatives for regeneration, locals were staying away.

Barker decided to hit back, setting up a group of like-minded shopkeepers to track the people making their life a misery. “It didn’t matter what the fund was intended to do, if you didn’t clean some of those things up, then people were still not going to come in because of what they were seeing,” Barker told The i Paper.

Membership of his Castleford Town Centre Business Review Group grew from 12 in 2020 to 70 now. They have a WhatsApp group to help identify thieves quickly; because members can pool CCTV images, the police are able to secure more convictions.

The group now meets regularly and has secured cash for a two-way radio system in shops to speed up response time to shoplifting, with two Police and Community Support Officers keeping tabs on crime in real time.

“Because everybody’s taking accountability for their own areas, we finally feel like we’re getting somewhere,” Barker said. It’s an example of a community striking back against the blight of shoplifting.

Castleford also happens to be a town in Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s Yorkshire and Humber constituency and has been instrumental in her thinking on one of Labour’s five guiding missions: Take Back Our Streets.

Head to any town centre around the country and you’ll hear a similar story:

© iNews