Mallon a mission

The moment of epiphany came in a swimming pool in Walsall. The 15-year-old Ray Mallon was playing water polo. With the game drawing to a close, he was on the brink of exhaustion when his opposite number politely advised him that, for the good of both boys' health, he should stop attacking and allow the clock to run down uneventfully.

"I thought: 'You've just let me know what you're thinking,'" says Mallon more than 30 years later. "From then on, I knew it didn't matter how tired I was – I knew the other guy would be more tired. You never know how close you are to winning, so you keep going – that's a good attitude to have in this game."

Until 1997, Mallon's "game" was relatively straightforward. A policeman for more than 25 years, his robust approach to crime prevention and reduction earned him the moniker "Robocop". Rising through the ranks to become detective superintendent of Cleveland police, he attracted nationwide attention – not least from Labour Party grandees – by championing "zero tolerance" policing. Under his charge, crime rates in Middlesbrough were cut more than 20%.

Then Mallon's tenacious attitude was truly tested. He was suspended from his job for about four years while an inquiry was carried out into allegations of misconduct, including claims of forced confessions. But no criminal charges were ever brought against Mallon, who maintains that he was the victim of a smear campaign orchestrated by "jealous and de-motivated individuals" within the police and local government.

But he has had the last laugh. Standing as an independent last year, Mallon became Middlesbrough's first elected mayor in a landslide victory: with more than 60% of the vote, he outpolled his nearest rival by almost 10,000 votes. Little more than a year on, the eyes of national policymakers – including home secretary David Blunkett – are again turning towards Middlesbrough as Mallon, at the head of an authority that employs more than 3000 people and has an annual budget in the region of £150m, puts into action a strategy that he believes will lead to an urban and social renaissance in the town.

It's quite a challenge. A town of 138,000 people, Middlesbrough shows symptoms of the sickness that blights numerous Northern towns – falling population, higher than average unemployment and a shortage of external investment. Plans for the transfer of its 13,000 council houses also seem to have stalled. Although part of the 2003 list, the council has pulled back from balloting tenants this year while it reassesses the financial implications of transfer.

Against this background, the "Raising Hope, Alleviating Fear" initiative, launched last October, has already cut crime and disorder to a degree not seen since the zero tolerance campaign. Burglaries are down 40% on last year's figures; overall crime is down 18% and, according to Mallon, begging has been virtually wiped out (although a number of local people claim beggars still work around the town's train station).

Old-style policing
"When I first came to this council, councillors and senior officers knew the town had a burglary problem but they couldn't tell me how many burglaries they had yesterday, or where they were," says Mallon, pulling down a ledger from the shelf of his office. "What this book tells me is that for this particular day there were this number of burglaries. Counting them up I can see that for the first 10 days of June we had 86 burglaries – not a healthy figure."

In the past 30 years, people’s behaviour has changed fundamentally. There’s more disrespect for society and the streets. It’s not the council that makes the streets dirty

Mallon chairs a weekly meeting with council and police representatives at which they analyse crime figures and work on a coordinated response. "The parties involved can ask: 'Why are we seeing a rise in this area?' We can then coordinate a surge of activity against the criminal fraternity in that area." He reads out the burglary figures for the remainder of June and approvingly declares them "back below average".

The same approach is used to counter low-level offences such as begging and gangs of nuisance youths. Mallon's contribution to these campaigns is the council's 40 community wardens. The power to intervene is at hand, he says, and plans are afoot to double the size of the force by the end of this year despite nationwide fears about future funding for community warden schemes (HT 6 May, page 7) – he sees his wardens as too important to cut back.

Critics call Mallon a one-issue mayor, obsessed with cutting crime to the exclusion of all else, and there seems to be some truth in that criticism. He acknowledges the regeneration role of housing and social services, but crime and disorder is his primary concern – as it is, he believes, for the ordinary man or woman in the street. "When you speak to the public they don't complain about education, social services – if they are financed and well managed you'll get there with them," he says. In his defence, he argues that he sees beyond crime statistics and arrests. The aim he has set himself, he says, is to "get a grip on the environment in the widest sense. What we need to do is focus on the environment then regeneration, business and transport."

But hasn't Middlesbrough suffered simply because of the decline of local industry and the lack of jobs? That suggestion is tantamount to heresy for Mallon. "In the past 30 years, people's behaviour has changed fundamentally. There's more disrespect for society and the streets. People complain about dirty streets, but it's not the council who makes them dirty – it's the public. I've got lots of imperfections but I would never think about throwing litter on the ground – me, throwing litter," he pauses, lost for words at the very thought.

Modern management
Mallon's almost puritanical style – he's teetotal, prides himself on his physical fitness and keeps his office as tidy as an officers' mess – has apparently rubbed off on employees. "If you'd have videoed them a year ago and compared it to now, they'd look like different people. I'll tell you what they talk about now, and they get this from me: haemorrhage of resources. Politicians don't normally talk about management but effectiveness, efficiency and managing money are what local government is about."

Bill Pearch, Middlesbrough council's head of housing, says Mallon's arrival has focused everyone's attention on delivery. As one of the mayor's executive appointees, Pearch says he feels more acutely aware of having to justify his decisions – and come up with the results. "There's now more of a systematic approach to doing things: you see a problem, you deal with that problem and you check that it has been resolved."

Group decision-making, the norm within local government, is, in Middlesbrough, slowly giving way to individual responsibility: "The division of responsibility is clearer and executive board members know they will have to meet management targets," says Pearch.