Residents have been urged to keep reporting gangs of teenagers racing motorbikes around housing estates.
Hollingdean Residents’ Association secretary Ian Beck raised the problems with bikers at a Brighton and Hove City Council housing management panel meeting yesterday (Tuesday 10 September).
Mr Beck told the panel of fellow residents, housing officials and councillors how the “plague” of young bikers was spreading from Hollingdean to the Bates Estate, Moulsecoomb and Coldean.
His residents’ group has met Sussex Police officers to discuss the issue because neighbours believe that many of the bikes may be stolen.
Mr Beck said: “I have heard they are in a house being used as a base to sell stolen motorbikes.
“As far as I’m concerned, other areas – Moulsecoomb and Bates – are getting it worse than us because we have a PCSO doing walkabout.”
Tenancy services operations manager Janet Dowdell said that the motorbike issue was on the council and Sussex Police joint action group agenda every month.
Ms Dowdell said that even though a response car was unlikely to come out, the issue would be flagged on the force’s systems.
She said: “If you’ve got 20 people in Moulsecoomb, Bates and Hollingdean all reporting these motorbikes of an evening, it flags up on the police system and they can deploy the resources.
“It’s on the neighbourhood police system and … they can send drones up to see what they are.”
Residents were told that the council could only take action if it was proved that council tenants were involved in criminal activity which breached their tenancy contract.
