At the risk of sounding a bit Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver, I wonder if anything can be done about the drug dealing and selling of shoplifted goods that is taking place on Myddleton Road on these warm evenings?

It's not exactly hard to identify the main cast, who have of late taken to riding round on yellow hire bikes by day. Its really frustrating: the street has come on in leaps and bounds but a persistent undercurrent of low level crime is holding it back and making it feel dodgy. Doubly frustrating is the fact that a couple of businesses on the street are providing a willing outlet for the shoplifters. 

I have made the police aware (they already know pretty much), but a persistent problem is the renting out by housing associations of local properties to 'difficult to house' tenants. There's a high concentration of these in the immediate Bowes area, with absentee landlords using rundown property to extract maximum housing benefit, sometimes without legal planning (like 105 Myddelton Road). 

Maybe I'm just old and grumpy, but it feels like its worth fighting for the road and area and making it a less hospitable place for antisocial behaviour.  So many people have done brilliant work to transform the street; any ideas about how we can go to the next level gratefully received.