A market town is being overrun by filthy streets where families live 10 to a house and people do drugs amid mounting piles of rubbish, it is claimed.
Locals say Ashton-under-Lyne’s terraced streets are plagued by anti-social behaviour and lined with fly-tipping and contaminated bins.
Pictures show rubbish dumped in the streets and alleyways of the St Peter’s area of the town in Greater Manchester.
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A local councillor claims youngsters in the town are being preyed on by organised crime groups and used as drug mules.
Independent councillor Kaleel Khan told the MEN: “There is nothing for kids to do, they are bored and full of energy. It is easy to get kids to transfer drugs from A to B and pay them off because they are making free money.
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“The children themselves are asking for help, they want facilities that encourage them to come out of doing antisocial behaviour or knife crime.”
The area has previously been blighted by youths as young as 10 running wild and shooting fireworks at each other with their bare hands.
Residents told of their ‘three months of hell’ as firework sales ramp up in ahead of Diwali, Halloween and Bonfire night, meaning yobs get their hands on rockets from October until New Year.
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Cllr Khan says some houses in the Holy Trinity area are holding families as big as 10, too much for the small bins provided by the council.
He said: “Fly-tipping is just everywhere around here. People hang around and have drugs here and do all sorts. It is the start of the problem.”
Shopkeeper Muhammad Zaid said he hadn’t seen a bin collection in the month he’d been there and had resorted to taking his bins to the tip in his own car.
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He said: “Fly-tipping is a huge problem here as well as littering from what I can see already. We clean up outside the shop every day. Cleaning trucks from the council do come, but only once a month. It doesn’t stay clean for long I’m told.”
Shoppers say anti-social behaviour and crime is a common occurrence.
One person, who gave his name as Zaid, said within the first couple of weeks of arriving in the area he saw one incident where ’27 plus’ police cars came storming onto the estate.
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Another resident, who wished to remain anonymous, added: “I’ve lived here all my life, in the past five years things have got bad.
“Crime and antisocial behaviour happens all the time around here. You get people firing fireworks at people, even at the police.”
Tameside Council says it has issued 160 fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping so far this year.
A spokesperson said: “We have officers out every day investigating and clearing up fly-tipping as part of the council’s Our Streets campaign to promote cleaner, greener and safer neighbourhoods. We will always take enforcement action where we find evidence of offences.”
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Chief Inspector Dave Henthorne from Greater Manchester Police said: “Since January 2022, there has been an overall reduction in antisocial behaviour and violent crime in the town centre. This mirrors the force-wide trend of crime having decreased.”
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