No Mans Land Braybrooke

Project Title: Clearance of No-Mans Land, Braybrooke Phase 1

Aims

To undertake major environmental improvement works to an area of ‘no-mans land’ in Braybrooke, Norris Green (SOA) affecting 33 properties (21 Cobalt & 12 Owner-occupied). The area identified is associated with significant negative, anti-social and criminal behaviour

Objectives

The following objectives support the development of this project:

1) To undertake physical improvements to land in order to clear out large areas of dumping and infestation and to re-instate secure rear boundary fencing.

2) To design out crime by re-instating private ‘ownership’ to an area that provides open access to the rears of properties in the area.

3) To improve personal security to properties and to increase sense of public and community safety by removing an area associated with negative activity.

4) To assist the reduction of domestic burglary in the area.

5) To assist to tackle an area associated and identified as a ‘hotspot’ for local gang activity.

6) To improve public health by the eradication of an area long associated with rat infestation which is adjacent to family homes.

Background

The land in question is a large area of ‘no-mans land’ to the rears of 33 properties in Holmrook Road, Scargreen Avenue & Cottesbrook Close, Norris Green. Whilst essentially landlocked, the area of land is accessible at several key points between blocks of terraced houses, and via occupied and unoccupied properties.

A long-term lack of investment in this area to create clear ‘defensible spaces’ for local residents has resulted in many households historically truncating their gardens to make their own spaces more defined and manageable. This has essentially reinforced the anonymity of the land area in question and through subsequent years of neglect and misuse it has become wild and overgrown suffering from significant dumping and fly-tipping. This in turn has become a haven for rodent infestation with regular reporting of rats being sighted in the ‘no-mans land’, and in neighbouring land and property as a result.

As the area of land is accessible and open for abuse with regard to negative and criminal behaviour, this particular locality is also indicated by Merseyside Police to be a local ‘hotspot’ for domestic burglary.

Current Situation December 2008

The Clearance of No-Mans Land, Braybrooke Phase 1, is now complete.

Cobalt, working in partnership with Merseyside Police, Liverpool City Council’s Environmental Health Team and with the full and active co-operation of local residents have purged and cleared the land site, re-allocated garden sites and erected secure and robust rear and rear intermediate perimeter fencing and gates to the associated properties. The areas of land reclaimed now form enclosed garden areas which have been treated, graded, top-soiled and seeded, thereby creating a secure defensible space and reinstating ‘private’ ownership.

The overall aim of this project; to remove the no-mans land by incorporating it into cleared, fenced-in gardens which offer vastly improved personal and property security has now been achieved.