Kent Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Scott has sent 75,000 questionnaires to householders across the county to gauge what effect crime and anti-social behaviour is having on residents.

And, crucially, he wants to know how well police are doing in dealing with it. Simon Finlay and Eddie Atkinson visited one ‘hot spot’ and encountered a dread of marauding youths…

Seaside towns which survive, if not necessarily thrive, on the influx of tourists in summer know that the winter months will be grim if the visitors do not show up or the British weather conspires against them.

Sheerness, cheerful enough this July morning, is not exactly awash with visitors.

The weather this year has been erratic at best, yet the popular circular sandpit and play area off Beach Street is populated with young families.

The arcade next door is shut but adorned with a huge mural depicting a mermaid with a detonation plunger leading to the three-quarters sunk Second World War munitions vessel, the SS Richard Montgomery.

Still partially visible offshore today and something of a ghoulish landmark, the ship retains a deadly cargo of shells and ammunition which sank on its way to the Normandy landings.

Now that the schools have shut for the holidays, some locals cannot shake off the dread of the arrival in numbers of youths with little better to do than cause mischief.

But the truth is, most say, it is an all year round problem.

Boys and girls alike come on mountain bikes, scooters and in gangs on foot - stealing, vandalising, verbally abusing, loitering, littering and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

Not all cause trouble and many agree the problem is not widespread but concentrated into small areas.

It is precisely this kind of activity that the neighbourhood policing initiative police commissioner Matthew Scott is keen to combat by targeting hot spots.

Out for a walk is Philip Adamson, 80, with his 13-year-old pet dog, Alfie.

Pacing by a wall, he says: “I’ve noticed things have got a bit worse. The roads here are very narrow and they’ll come roaring down the street; kids on push bikes pulling wheelies, I just can’t understand it.

“I was a lad once, but I had respect for people; they don’t seem to care about anyone anymore.

“There are cars and bikes going at 40-50mph and if kids walked out into the street they wouldn’t stand a chance. It frightens the life out of me.”

Nearby, wheelchair-user Patricia Thomas, 76, says she was the victim of a mugging a few days before as she was being pushed by her husband Allan.

She recalls: “A fella tried to take his wallet, he pulled my wheelchair round and then pulled him as well, swiping for his pocket.”

The attacker left the scene empty-handed but the couple were terrified by the experience. They reported the incident to police, who have still to return Allans’s trousers and wallet.

Sheerness grew out of a small fort built by Henry VIII, operating as a crucial dockyard for the Royal Navy for three centuries, accommodating ship-building, a First World War ‘torpedo school’ and even briefly being captured by the Dutch navy.

Although also popular as a seaside resort, the town suffered when the dockyard it had grown around was closed in 1960.

While the port did come under commercial ownership, the town’s population declined and historians note it lost 50 listed buildings, including the Admiralty House, in the 20 years that followed.

Since then, despite its continued importance to import and industry, Sheerness never recovered from its 1920s population, and has struggled with one of the highest unemployment rates in Kent (7.9% in 2024).

Sheerness has seen a steady rise in recent reported crime. In June 2023, there were 204, increasing to 322 May this year, according to Kent Police’s own statistics.

Naturally there are peaks and troughs across the graph but the trend is northwards.

In May, the most commonly reported are violence and sexual offences (125), antisocial behaviour (64), criminal damage (criminal damage and arson) and shoplifting (22).

By contrast, in the sought-after and well-to-do town of Hythe down the coast, the figures offer a stark contrast - violence and sexual offences (27), criminal damage and arson (16), antisocial behaviour (10) and shoplifting (six).

Despite returning a Labour MP at the general election, census profiles characterise Sheerness as “strong right”. However, compared to national statistics deprivation levels are significantly higher here and the house prices appreciably lower.

Conservative Kent County Council (KCC) member for the area Andy Booth, does not mince his words when it comes to crime.

He says: “Like a lot of people in this area, I am very conscious about crime and very conscious about anti-social behaviour.

“It is not as widespread as some people might think and is confined to hot spots, but it can cause absolute misery to people living in those areas.

“I have said it before - there are feral children running amok and allowed to do so by parents and grandparents who simply don’t care.”

Around 2,900 surveys have been posted to households in Sheerness by Mr Scott’s office to garner views about residents’ experiences of crime and the police’s response.

That is a fair chunk of the town’s estimated 5,200 homes (and its 13,000 population) but suggests that a real problem exists there.

Ray Featherstone has had an association with the Sheerness County Youth Centre for more than six decades and is clearly immensely proud of the many thousands of local youngsters who have found a home away from home here.

The 80-year-old is equally proud of striking a deal with KCC to buy the building a few years ago, before the authority - struggling to make ends meet in the face of rising costs and squeezed funding settlements - withdrew funding for many youth projects.

Despite its deserved reputation as a haven, it also is in danger of acting as a magnet for undesirables. Security is now at the heart of its day-to-day operation.

The club has an established regime and carries out random searches using a metal and knife metal-detecting ‘wand’, has CCTV cameras trained on walkways, a heavy magnetic security door and has just ordered five body-worn cameras for volunteers.

Mr Featherstone explains: “The body cameras are so the staff are covered because there might be people, who we don’t want, being attracted to the club. We have to be very careful these days.”

He hopes the commissioner’s survey will work but doubts if there are sufficient police resources to implement the actions taken from its findings.

But the veteran youth worker is in no doubt KCC’s removal of funding to youth schemes across Kent will solve its own immediate financial problem but will merely dump the consequences onto other bodies, the police among them.

Mr Scott says: “It’s really straightforward stuff - the officers will be out on the beat, visible, responding to incidents and problem solving in order to drive down crime and also bring people to justice.”

He hopes that by concentrating officers into crime hot spots and taking notice of local concerns, a discernible difference can be made by the time the next survey goes out in a year’s time.

Asked which postcodes would be targeted, Mr Scott’s office refused to say for operational reasons.

An estimated 75,000 surveys have been sent out across 25 identified areas across the county with the same aim.

Mr Scott, who was re-elected for a third term of office in May, concedes it is “very easy” for police to say hot spot patrols have been taking place.

“But what I want to see is if the residents have felt the impact of it,” he adds.

London-born town councillor Brian Spoor has lived in the area for almost 50 years and reels off a list of targets for vandals - a new toilet block damaged 40 times in seven months and a play area feature destroyed, being just two of them.

Standing on his balcony where the Union flag waves vigorously in the stiff breeze, he concedes the town council can do little to help but offer some funding to groups who can.

Mr Spoor believes crime needs punishment and if that means building more prisons to fill, so be it.

He has heard of shoplifting that goes unchallenged by anyone, least of all the victims who have to bear the financial burden of the loss.

A shopkeeper in the High Street reports thefts “every day” from his off licence. Some are utterly brazen while others, the younger ones, just steal sweets for kicks.

On one occasion when a CCTV image was posted on social media, a horrified parent returned to the shop to pay for the stolen items.

Stuart McDonald, shopkeeper at Spoilt For Choice - a retail outlet for a number of artists and craft makers - says the shop has to have two staff present at all times. One to mind the till and the other to walk the floor.

Thieves have even stolen earrings worth a few pounds in the past.

Other shopkeepers, keen not to expose themselves to reprisals, talk candidly but anonymously of inconsiderate bike-riding, rudeness, littering and loitering as standard.

Asked if action from the KPCC survey might work, one said: “Hope so. This can’t go on.”