I have never felt safe in this alley. The only times I use it alone are during the daytime and generally I have avoided it since I first started walking to school by myself at the age of 9 or 10. In the last 30 years nothing significant has been done to make it feel safer.

On Sunday while on the phone to the police I still had no intention of following suspects up that path, hoping instead that the police might take less than 15 minutes to respond to a 999 call relating to an assault (possibly multiple assaults) with an on-going situation and a train stopped at the station. If we lived in a remote part of Scotland then I might understand a 15 minute response time, but in suburban London they should be able to respond significantly faster on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

But back to the alley. What do people think we should be doing? Should the community be insisting that the council installs a series of CCTV cameras, or should we be raising funds locally for a CCTV system for this alley - perhaps with the help of Local Assembly Funding?
Should we leave the alley as generations before us have done?
Or should it just be closed off and make people walk the long way round?