COUNCIL LEADER CALLS FOR ZERO TOLERANCE AS THE WEST END SLIDES INTO
LAWLESSNESS AND DECAY

Only five years ago, it was the geographical hub of what Newsweek called the
coolest city in the world. From here, the vibe that fuelled Cool Britannia
emanated in a feel-good wave that helped propel New Labour to an optimistic
victory.

Today, London's West End, the home of Britain's club and theatre culture is,
says the man who "manages" it, close to anarchy. Gone is the feel-good
factor, replaced instead by drug-dealing on the streets, armed robbers,
binge drinkers and so much rubbish that it cannot be cleared away between
the end of one debauched day and the dawn of another.

Simon Milton, the leader of Westminster City Council, compares the West End
today to Times Square in New York 10 years ago, a magnet for drug-users and
dealers, criminals and vagrants. And the astonishing thing about Mr Milton's
claim is that although his council licensed the pubs, clubs and bars
responsible for the entertainment saturation suffocating the area, he is
shouting about it from the rooftops.

"We are struggling to put our best foot forward and I realise that this is
shooting ourselves in that foot," he said. "But we can't brush the problem
under the carpet. We have aggressive drug-dealers on the streets, vagrants
and beggars. There have been shootings in clubs , outside the Hanover Grand
and on Golden Square. We can't ignore this. We have to adopt a policy of
zero tolerance."

The West End is a generic term for a heartland encompassing what planners
after the Second World War called a central activity zone, an area in which
Londoners could work, shop, dine, dance and enjoy culture.

Among the thronging areas it encompasses are Leicester Square, Covent
Garden, Trafalgar Square, Oxford Street, Soho, Mayfair, Fitzrovia,
Piccadilly, Charing Cross and Marylebone. Some parts, such as Mayfair and
Marylebone, have few problems at street level. Others, including Soho and
Leicester Square, are becoming characterised by it.

Every night, tens of thousands of people flock to a relatively small area ­
up to 100,000 a night at weekends ­ and they can drink in many bars until
3am. But the Underground closes at 12.30am, night buses are regarded as
dangerous and unpopular and many licensed cab drivers avoid the area,
leaving it for 5,000 unlicensed drivers to pick people off the street
illegally. Many of these drivers, when caught, are found to be carrying
drugs or to have criminal records for violence.

At a meeting of the Greater London Authority this week at which plans to
relax licensing laws were being discussed, Mr Milton pulled no punches. "We
have experienced a proliferation of bars and clubs, the rise of the 'mega
pub' with its emphasis on cheap 'vertical drinking' and the emergence of the
'mega club' holding up to 2,500 people," he said. During the same period, he
added, the granting of 3am alcohol licences had become the norm.

"Extended hours and saturation of alcohol-related premises creates major
policing headaches," he said. "We have only 15 police officers on patrol to
cope with hundreds of thousands of drunk young people on a Friday or
Saturday. There is open drug-dealing on the streets as dealers find the
crowds to be sources of business as well as offering them anonymity. Guns
and violence are common in the West End."

On a hot, sunny evening this week, the best and worst of the West End was on
display. In Covent Garden and Soho, good-natured drinkers spilt on to the
streets after work. Tourists milled about, clearly astonished by the buzz
that even a midweek night in the capital can generate.

But as dusk fell, the mood changed. Outside the Prince Edward Theatre on Old
Compton Street, Charles Dwyer, an American from Boston, was queueing for the
musical Mamma Mia!

"There's a guy in the doorway next door drinking beer, smoking cigarettes
and begging," he said. "Where'd he get the money for the smokes? He wasn't
just begging. It was a bit more than that, a bit aggressive. And we've
already been offered drugs twice. It's a very uncomfortable feeling. Is this
area OK?"

Along Moor Street, only yards away, several African men are offering drugs.
They don't mess about with cannabis here. They sell heroin and cocaine.
Along other thoroughfares, Berwick Street, Meard Street, Romilly Street,
Rupert Street and Tisbury Court, residents say crack is on sale.

"You see them smoking it from old Coke cans," said a senior member of the
Soho Society, which looks after residents' interests. He has asked not to be
named because drug-dealers frequent the street on which he lives.

"In the morning, you go down and you clear away the cans and the needles
left there by heroin users. Mothers are frightened to take their children to
school because these guys have guns and they settle their arguments either
with them or with knives. The mothers have asked for police protection
because it's still dangerous here at 7.30am on the way to school. Many of
the dealers are still on the streets."

The police deny the West End is getting worse, rejecting the figure of only
15 officers on the streets and pointing to the the14,000 arrests they have
made this year, compared with about 11,000 last year. A spokeswoman said
Charing Cross and West End Central police stations have introduced new night
shifts which produce about 25 officers on patrol from each station. They are
backed up by mobile Territorial Support Groups of officers.

Recent crackdowns on drug dealing and robbery have included Project Lilac
and Operation Upright, high-profile attacks on crime hotspots. Increased
attention has also been paid to night bus routes to make them safer.

"I think you'll find that stories about people finding hypos [syringes] on
the way to school are a thing of the past," said a police spokeswoman. "And
we've made big inroads on drug-dealing. Along Moor Street, Berwick Street
and Gerrard Street, we recently took out 19 dealers who ended up with a
total of 44 years in prison."

But as Simon Milton points out, there are 42,000 police in New York City,
compared with just 28,000 in London, a metropolis of about the same size.
The West End is, he says, now full. It needs better policing, more transport
and fewer people. There should be an overspill into other parts of London.

"We need more aggressively physical policing," he said. "We are saturated.
We can't take any more. We're not against the idea of a 24-hour city but
there are lessons to be learnt first, both here and in other parts of the
country. If you want to have longer, staggered, drinking hours, you must
have policies to work out what total number of bars and people are
acceptable. You have to have acceptable levels of policing. And you have to
have adequate transport to disperse people fast so the dealers and criminals
have no one to prey on."

Wise words that may save the rest of Britain from the West End's painful
experiences. But lessons that perhaps should have been learnt long ago from
the city that really is the coolest in the world, New York.