PROSTITUTION has destroyed the family life of the Manchester Road area, says the police officer responsible for tackling the problem.

Giving evidence in an application for an Anti Social Behaviour Order against street girl Miaya Bryan, PC Michael Diffin told how the number of families living in the area had plummeted in the past 20 years.

A decade ago many of the three-bedroomed houses in the area were occupied by families, but now many are owned by housing associations and the tenants were transient.

"The family structure is gradually disappearing," he told Swindon magistrates.

He told the court that men walking home were approached by hookers, while girls as young as 14 were pestered by men looking for sex.

The problem has prompted numerous complaints from residents 39 in the first four months of this year. They have formed a group called Streetwatch to monitor the hookers and provided daily logs to the police.

PC Diffin also told of a drug problem. He said: "Where you get prostitution, 95 per cent of them are on drugs, so drug dealers follow them into the area.

"We have intelligence reports of drug dealers moving into the area, both in Gorse Hill and the Manchester Road area.

"We are talking about class A drugs heroin and crack cocaine."

But, he claimed, an attempt to stamp out the problem using injunctions and ASBOs and targeting the kerb crawlers as well as the street girls was having an effect.

He said that when he started policing the area 18 months ago the red light district was confined to the Manchester Road area. But after a campaign of arrests, residents of nearby Gorse Hill are finding the women touting for business on their streets.

Describing the impact of telling people that they were now living in a red light district, he said: "It is horrific.

"People see their house prices plummet. It is not a situation that I would like to have to live in that area."

Bryan, 26, of Bullfinch, Coving-ham, who is on a two-year community rehabilitation order for 12 offences including drug offences and theft, contested the application by the Crown.

She said she had taken up prostitution to fund her heroin habit. But she claimed that she was now clean of drugs. She said: "Considering I am not in the situation that I was before, an order imposed on me from 6pm to 6am is going to restrict access to places I need to go." She explained that her boyfriend and her laundry woman both lived in Gorse Hill.

Emma Easterbrook, Bryan's counsel, said: "The best thing for Miss Bryan and the community at large if for her to carry on rehabilitating herself and make sure there is no reason for her to go back to loitering."

Imposing an ASBO banning her from the area between 6am and 6pm for two years, chairman of the bench Peter Simpson said: "It is necessary to protect the residents."

Bryan was also fined a total of £100 for two charges of loitering for prostitution.

Tina Clarke