shards of glass in Nine Acres play-area

Tue 20 Jul 2010, 20:57

As a member of the Tennis Club, I frequently have to sweep the courts to remove broken glass before playing matches. The club house has been vandalised repeatedly and last weekend we discovered that the litter bin nearby had been burned to the ground. So frustrating!!

Sat 10 Jul 2010, 12:29

Hello, I've just spent about 40 minutes clearing up lots of glass fragments from round the small climbing frame in the children's area of Nine Acres recreation ground. Clearly groups of people, I'm assuming young people, congregated there last night, and a number of them smashed beer bottles (bought from Co-op?) without any regard for the safety of potential users of the park. I'm pretty astounded that anyone, even drunk, could be that deliberately anti-social in an area frequented by small children - you could almost believe that the debris was deliberately left to maim or injure the unsuspecting. Even when I lived in Hackney, believe it or not, I never encountered anything quite so viciously delinquent. The police aren't on hand today - the local council cleaning team nowhere in evidence. I'd really like to see officials getting tough on this, and perhaps instituting an enforced alcohol-free zone in Nine Acres. I'd be interested to know if anyone else has encountered this problem of strewn glass shards recently - and any advice anyone has about what steps can be taken to notify the relevant authorities in such a way that they actually do something. I don't think inaction is an option when the consequences of such mindlessness could be really horrific.