Interesting Leytonstone Area Residents’ Association meeting last night on Crime and Safety, particularly given the news today regarding CCTV in Leytonstone town centre. Good turnout with ward Councillors Clyde Loakes and Marie Pye speaking along with representatives from the Safer Neighbourhoods and Neighbourhood Watch schemes.

A fairly wide range of topics were covered, but one in particular struck me as worth mentioning. In response to my question regarding the state of the High Road and its effect on crime in the area, Councillors Loaked and Pye mentioned the difficulties they have actually persuading property owners on the High Road to maintain their buildings. For example, the Independent Buildings in Church Lane have various bits of graffitti on them. The clock set in the buildings facade has also been broken for a long time. Apparently though the owners won’t allow the council to clean the graffitti or fix the clock, both offered free of charge. Quite what the reasons were for this I’m not sure, but it does seem a bit odd.

I’ve mentioned the “roof tree” problem on the High Road before, and the general run-down state of many buildings, but apparently the council are powerless to do anything about this either. There are no by-laws that can be enforced to make landlords keep their buildings in a presentable state. This seems ridiculous, those buildings will just remain as they are until they’re either sold, they fall down or by some miracle the owners decide to give them a lick of paint. With no investment money on the horizon, it seems the state of the High Road isn’t likely to improve any time soon. Maybe we should have a “Fix Leytonstone High Road Day”, we can all go armed with ladders, pots of paint and brushes to tart the place up!

One more thing – estate agents. Apparently, many of the “to let” signs around Leytonstone are just put up to attract business. Estate agents give landlords management fee discounts if they leave a sign up on their property. So the transient appearance of the High Street and many other areas of Leytonstone may not actually be a true reflection of the real situation. Unfortunately all of those signs give a bad impression. In recent years, schools have been brought into the equation as well – estate agents put up signs in peoples gardens advertising an event at a local school, but the boards look like their regular signs with just a tiny strip on the bottom actually mentioning the event. Bit cheeky really.