'HOLIDAY GO-AHEAD FOR GANG' - City Hall U-turn means members of W9 postcode gang ‘SMG Blood’ are off to Lake District

Published: 12 March 2010
by JAMIE WELHAM

PLANS to send members of Westminster’s most infamous postcode gang on an activities course in the Lake District have been given the green light after a dramatic U-turn by politicians at City Hall.

The Cumbrian charity Brathay has been commissioned to mentor 20 gang members from the SMG Blood gang – a feared presence on the streets of W9. 

Youth workers hope the plan will cut reoffending rates and break the gang’s monopoly stranglehold on youngsters, some as young as 11, who are lured into their ranks. 

The project, which was rubber-stamped at this week’s full council meeting, will last for eight months and costs £4,000 per person.

When the trip was floated in January, a ­senior council source said it would never see the light of day, because City Hall could not be seen to be handing out “holidays” to gang members. They said to do so would be pol­itically and publicly “catastrophic”.

The council’s safety chief, Councillor Daniel Astaire, said the rethink came about because he had been persuaded the six-day residential course would work better in Brathay’s centre at the Lake ­Windermere beauty spot, rather than at the ­council’s own adventure centre in Surrey.

The gang members, who are aged between 15 and 24 – some of whom will be prolific offenders who have been arrested for offences such as serious violence, drug dealing and carrying weapons – will take part in team-building exercises such as abseiling, caving and rowing.  

The £80,000 project is being jointly funded by the Home Office and the Brathay charity itself.

Cllr Astaire said it was crucial to remove gang members from their everyday environment. 

“We’ve explored all the options regarding the residential course aspect of this important project, and we are confident that Brathay’s experience and expertise in this area merits this being held at their already established headquarters in ­Cumbria,” he added.

“In fact, being taken away so far from the negative influences that these troubled young people are surrounded by, and which are the cause of many of their issues, often helps.”

It comes after a rise in gang violence in North Paddington, Queen’s Park and the Harrow Road. The programme has previously worked successfully in Lambeth where of 25 young people taken from the borough in 2008 – a total of 18 have not reoffended.