The incident on Friday happened in Chapel Road. Dean Gardens was involved only because it was large enough for the air ambulance to land on.A lot of effort in the last 12 months or so by the police, residents' groups, drug and alcohol services and homeless charities has gone in to trying to make Dean Gardens safer. CCTV has been installed and I know the Neighbourhood Police patrol on a regular basis and ASBOs have been taken out against some of the regular street drinkers. And there are still more ideas being discussed, especially about how to make it safer after dark.Yet, there is a limit to what can be done. It's certainly not sensible to have two 24-hour off licences within yards of the place. It's extremely difficult to get a licence withdrawn but maybe one action we can all take is to come together and petition the Council to reduce the licence hours. If there's interest in this then as chair of West Ealing Neighbours I'm happy to take this forward and we can start it off with a public meeting.Some of the problems in Dean Gardens are that some people with drinking problems or who are homeless do not always want help. Equally, the murder in Dean Gardens a few years ago was simply because the people concerned happened to get off a bus outside Dean Gardens and continued their argument to its fatal conclusion in its grounds. I wish I had the answers to making it 100% safe but I don't think there are any. All we can do is to continue to try our hardest to make it as safe as we can.
David Highton ● 4976d