THE presence of street cleaners during the evening may be responsible for a drop in anti-social behaviour in Devizes, the town's police chief said this week.

Kennet District Council has increased the hours for its street cleaners to 10pm in Devizes and Marlborough from Tuesday to Saturday.

Inspector Pete Bowerbank told a meeting of Devizes Town Council's community and civic resources committee on Tuesday: "We have noticed a significant decline in anti-social

behaviour over the weekends.

"It may be due to increased police patrols, or the weather, but what we have noticed is there's been a decrease in groups of youths gathering around in the town since the street cleaning squad at Kennet started cleaning up in the evenings.

"Maybe the youths see the reflective tabards the street cleaners are wearing and move on."

Insp Bowerbank said he and Kennet were working on formalising an agreement so that the council's street cleaners and car parking attendants report incidents to the police where they see people who are drinking or taking drugs in public places.

Insp Bowerbank said the police had served a couple of warnings to moped riders who gather in the Market Place. He said there was a hard core of about ten 'boy racers' who gathered in the town.

"We are continuing to monitor them. We have issued warnings of seizures of vehicles. If they are seen committing a crime such as careless driving their vehicle will be taken off them," he said.

He also said a youth had been arrested in connection with criminal damage in Sidmouth Street. Six youths had been causing problems for shopkeepers but the police had now dealt with those responsible. While some of them may be charged he said the parents of others had been contacted.

Insp Bowerbank said overall crime in the Devizes area had fallen by 1.3 per cent. The number of crimes reported between April last year and March 31 was 1,489, down from 1,509 crimes in the previous year.

Violent crime went up by four crimes to 261, non-dwelling burglaries increased by 21 crimes to 135 and vehicle crime increased by 18 crimes to 144. House burglaries went down by four crimes to 92, theft decreased by 80 crimes to 325 and incidents of criminal damage fell by ten to 385.