Turf war

It’s almost lunchtime on a bleak March day in the St Paul’s area of Bristol, and underneath a motorway bridge, three men are taking drugs.

This is a popular spot with drug users because their dealers like to be able to drop off supplies and make a quick getaway on their motorbikes. Photographer Tim Foster and I are here with Janine McCretton, a local tenant warden, in the hope of finding drug-use debris to photograph. But we find something much more shocking.

As we watch, one of the men slumps down. The others shake him, but he doesn’t wake up and they begin to panic. We move closer and see that the man, who looks to be in his 30s, is grey and lifeless. As his friends attempt to resuscitate him, McCretton calls an ambulance. The other two look no older than 17 and are scared. They have been drinking, they say, and taking heroin.

Two policemen turn up, apparently from nowhere, and try to bring the man round. After about 15 minutes, the ambulance is nowhere to be seen, but the man starts to move and tries to speak. This time, it seems, he’s been lucky, so we leave the police to it.

To strangers to St Paul’s, this might be a shocking experience, but McCretton, who has lived in the area for 17 years, is unfazed – and angry. As we walk away, she admits: “Sometimes I think: ‘just leave them’.” It’s a comment that she knows could sound callous, but it sums up the anger residents feel about the drug culture of St Paul’s.

That anger recently showed itself, strange as it may sound, in a clash between residents and a scheme that was meant to help the area overcome its drug problems.

Opposing sides

In February, community group St Paul’s Unlimited won what it describes as one of its biggest victories so far when Bristol council refused planning permission to a drugs treatment centre in St Paul’s that the NHS-funded Bristol Specialist Drugs Service had wanted to open. St Paul’s Unlimited consists of local housing associations, such as Knightstone – which manages the Community Links warden scheme McCretton worked for until it closed in March – local police, the council’s community safety team and tenant groups.

The group had carried out a high-profile poster and leafleting campaign before the council made its planning decision, saying that another treatment centre – the area already had one BSDS centre and several other agencies to help drug users – would attract more dealers and increase crime.

But ironically, the campaign directly opposed another group aiming to reduce drug use: the drug treatment agencies.

St Paul’s Unlimited sees it as a victory for the tenant voice, but drug treatment experts argue the defeat has lost a valuable opportunity to treat the drugs problem.

So how did St Paul’s reach this stalemate?

For years St Paul’s has had a reputation for drug use, but over the years the drugs have got harder and it has become notorious for crack and heroin. The area itself is tiny – about half a mile squared and with only about 47 streets. The Georgian buildings are as beautiful as any in Bristol’s exclusive Clifton, but in St Paul’s the atmosphere is different: prostitutes walk the streets at 10am and it is easy to pick out the thin, wasted features of drug users passing by.

But it’s an area that has hopes of change. Just across the main road, Bristol’s central shopping centre, Broadmead, is being redeveloped, and residents hope some of its money will come their way. And St Paul’s does seem to be getting some attention: the police presence is stronger in the area than it has been for years; the Black and White cafe, a notorious crack den for years, was finally shut by compulsory purchase order last year and is about to be demolished; and for the first time, residents feel they have a voice, in the form of St Paul’s Unlimited.

With so many things happening at once, a conflict between two groups trying to do the best for the area was perhaps inevitable.

They are attracting vulnerable people to the area – dealers see them and hang around like kids in a candy shop

Jayne Whittlestone

The residents’ most persuasive piece of evidence in their fight against the location of another centre in St Paul’s was a map showing 49 agencies already operating in or close to St Paul’s, from homelessness hostels and advice agencies to drug treatment centres and agencies to help prostitutes. Knightstone Housing Association’s Bristol manager Jayne Whittlestone, who sits on some of St Paul’s Unlimited’s task groups, believes the map may have helped change council planners’ minds. “These agencies are attracting the most vulnerable people to the area and dealers see them and hang around like kids in a candy shop,” she says. “The biggest thing for me is how small St Paul’s is, and how close drug use happens to schools and residential areas.”

As McCretton gives me a tour of the area’s worst spots, she repeats this argument.

Her first stop is a park that is bordered by Knightstone houses and notorious for drug use, where the quieter corners are littered with empty needle packets and used condoms. One entrance to the park is across the road from the Bristol Drugs Project, a drugs counselling and needle exchange service. McCretton believes this is why the park is so popular with drug users. It is much cleaner now than it was before undergrowth was cleared away in 2002 and the council’s specialist drugs and sex litter team began to clean it daily, she says. But she warns:

“The proposed Bristol Specialist Drugs Service extension was opposite the park’s other entrance. To have put BSDS there would have meant this park was the logical point for people to go to inject. Does it help to give needles out when users are so off their heads they leave them in the park?”

As the tour continues, it’s clear McCretton feels exhausted by the problems. She has got used to hearing gunshots at night, she says. “My neighbour was shot in the face – I think it was related to drugs.” She is nervous of being seen with a photographer and stops ours from taking pictures when we are outside a derelict building she says is used as a crack den. “Everywhere you go there are users and dealers,” she says. “You feel threatened.”

Next she takes us to another park, which looks pleasant at first: it’s grade I listed and has some well-preserved play equipment. But the park is a popular spot with prostitutes and drug users. Even now there is a group of nervous-looking men loitering by the entrance – waiting for a dealer, McCretton suggests. “The play equipment is about 25 years old. It’s not worn out because kids don’t play here because they don’t feel safe.” Five minutes later, police motorcyclists surprise the group and arrest one of them.

St Paul’s clearly has its problems – but as Lorraine Woolston, Knightstone’s housing manager and a St Paul’s Unlimited task group member points out, it’s not the only place in Bristol with a drugs problem.

“It’s not that we don’t support drugs services in Bristol but we feel we can’t keep locating them in St Paul’s – it’s a city-wide problem.”

Beyond the immediate issues, stopping the new BSDS centre has been heralded as a major victory for tenant consultation – posters declaring “We Did It!” decorate community notice boards. “This is the first time people in St Paul’s have spoken out,” Whittlestone says. McCretton goes further when asked whether this is Nimbyism. “It’s a good sign that we’ve reached Nimby status – it means we’re empowered as a community.”

But the area’s drug agencies argue that the blocked centre would have helped tackle the very problems of drug use that residents are worried about. Gerry Monaghan, clinical manager of BSDS, says the opposition to the new centre surprised him. Sitting in BSDS’ existing centre, one road away from the

St Paul’s boundary, he says: “I am not unsympathetic to residents’ views, but my feeling is what we’re offering would support regeneration of the area, not the opposite.”

He says the accusation that a new centre would increase crime was simply wrong. “It was to be a criminal justice-based treatment service, for people referred by the probation service, and the site was opposite the probation service centre. If they had offended in the area, they’d be returned to court.” And he denies their service would have caused more drug use on the street. “We offer methadone and substitute prescriptions, which are consumed on the premises.

There would be no needles lying about.”

Although Monaghan is careful to say he understands where residents are coming from, he is clearly disappointed. “Finding a building is very, very difficult within the NHS budget. This one was opposite the probation service and it was derelict.” But BSDS will not look for another place in St Paul’s now, he says. “We’ll have to find an alternative – you don’t set out to upset people.”

If there’s money to expand treatment services but not places to do it, that’s a real sadness for the city

Maggie Telfer

The right move?

Maggie Telfer is director of the Bristol Drugs Project, a charity that provides needle exchange to 3500 drug users a year. Telfer is concerned the residents’ campaign may make it harder for addicts to seek help.

“If you’re addicted to something like heroin or crack cocaine it’s very hard to take those first steps and come to a drug agency,” she says. “The main barrier is other people’s attitudes. People have felt very intimidated.”

She agrees that drugs affect the whole of Bristol. BDP provides services from venues based across the city, including 33 GPs’ surgeries, a mobile needle exchange service, probation offices and hostels and through home visits and street work. But she maintains that St Paul’s, where BDP has been for 10 years, is a logical base. “It’s important to be near the centre and the bus station so people can get to us easily.” She says the St Paul’s Unlimited campaign has been a setback to those helping people come off drugs. “If there’s money to expand treatment services but not places to do it, that’s a real sadness for the city.”

However, it was not just the issue of drugs that upset St Paul’s Unlimited campaigners – they also felt they weren’t properly consulted. The Safer Bristol Partnership – the city’s crime and disorder reduction partnership – knew about the BSDS proposal, say the campaigners, but didn’t tell them about it, despite sitting on the St Paul’s Unlimited drugs task group. “I came across it as a planning application for a healthcare centre,” says McCretton. “We were pleased at first. Then we had an anonymous email saying it would be a drugs centre. We were furious we were not consulted.”

This fanned the flames of the dispute. Woolston says: “The community feels it’s not consulted because it’s St Paul’s. Once the proposal was in the public domain BSDS had an open day, but it was poorly advertised and a few people couldn’t get in.” The situation was made worse, she adds, because the planning permission claimed the site was not a residential area – although there are Knightstone homes across the road.

A spokesperson for the Safer Bristol Partnership was unavailable and the council was reluctant to comment because of the general election. At BSDS, Monaghan says the organisation did try to consult but had not known about St Paul’s Unlimited.

“We did publicity with posters, it was in the press and we sent letters to councillors.

But normally we’d do consultation after the planning application went in anyway,”

he says. “We even reviewed our application following the consultation – it went through the planning committee twice.”

Both sides have strongly held views, and in the short term, the residents have won.

But was it the right decision? Probably the most insightful view comes from someone in the middle of this debate: Sam Walker, a 21-year-old user of Bristol Drugs Project’s needle exchange service. A drug user since he was 11, he has been off heroin since December, thanks to a methadone prescription from BSDS, but still uses crack. Although he doesn’t live in St Paul’s, he says he spends all his time there. “I come into St Paul’s every morning to get crack and leave between 11pm and 4am,” he says.

He agrees that drug users come into St Paul’s from outside – but for him that’s why having treatment centres there makes sense. “I think it’s terrible that the BSDS extension was turned down,” he adds. “I expect residents complained about crime, but if they extended BSDS more people would get onto methadone and that would cut crime.

“There’s not enough help for addicts in Bristol,” he says. “My doctor said I should have a Bristol Drugs Project liaison worker but it took two months for them to see me. People need more help and it needs to be quicker. If someone says: ‘I wanna get clean,’ there is a four-month waiting list.” And he dismisses the idea that treatment centres will attract more users. “All the addicts in Bristol come to St Paul’s to score anyway – if you put BSDS in, they wouldn’t be scoring, they’d be coming in to get clean.”