mitchy999: I'm sorry to hear about the mugging. I do hope you are ok.

I think that decent lighting may help but, crucially, in my view, this is more about third party visibility. CCTV may be part of the answer but there is no substitute for being in the public eye in this case.

One of the objections raised about the conversion of the Old Bank to a takeaway that I, and others including the Forest Hill Society, raised was that this would mean that this area was not overlooked in any way. A restaurant, on the other hand, could have had witnesses at least to this incident and may have acted as a deterrent too.