George Lawton Hall targeted by vandals and anti-social behaviour

Mossley’s George Lawton Hall has fallen victim to a series of acts of vandalism, causing upset and frustration amongst the staff.

Vandals have targeted plants - which were recently judged for Britain in Bloom - and the coping stones, at the hall.

The chairman of the Mossley Town Team, Tony Snape, said they have had ongoing issues with ‘social misbehaving’ over the past few years.

He said: “It’s been going on for years - we got involved with a local school and police, then for a year or so it was great. But this latest episode has really annoyed us because they started off with pushing one plant off a wall and taking the coping stones with it, and they’ve now ended up taking five planters with all the displays in outside the library.”

Lots of the incidents are reported onto Facebook community groups, however, Tony said this just seems to make things more difficult for them.

“People do see things,” he said. “But then they put it on social media and don’t report it.

“The police need to know about every single incident, no matter how minor it is - it all needs to be reported to them. The more reports being fed back to the police, the greater presence they can have.

“There’s been considerable vandalism, even down at Emmaus, and the police’s hands are tied if they aren’t being told about it.

“Even just a simple note of the date and time when the public see it happening because opposite the hall there are cameras run by the council, but they need a time slot in which to go through the CCTV evidence.”

Valerie Snape, Tony’s wife, said that the damage to the building is ‘soul destroying’.

She said: “I’d just like to talk to the people who are doing this and ask them why. I don’t understand it. We work very hard, we spend a lot of hours in our own time trying to make Mossley pretty and we’re not young anymore.

“I’m nearly 80 and if they had a grandma my age who did all this work and then someone came along vandalising it, how would they feel?

“I do appreciate that they’re young and I was young myself, I did stupid things too, but I didn’t vandalise things. It’s just heart-breaking.”

Valerie shared that she was ‘born and bred’ in Mossley and felt very proud of the town, so it was frustrating to see that a small minority of people, who don’t take pride in it, are trying to ruin the hard work put into town.

She added that if the reason for the vandalism is ‘merely boredom’ then she would be more than happy to invite the youths along to help out with gardening and feels they would enjoy it.

The anti-social behaviour isn’t only limited to vandalism, as Tony shared that groups of teenagers have also been gaining access onto the roof which has resulted in a plethora of issues.

“One day somebody’s going to fall off and seriously injure themselves,” he said. “We get it, we really do - we were kids once. But the things they’re doing are just dangerous and will only lead to injury. If we can get to the parents, like we did a couple of years ago, it seems to stop, but I think half the problem is that the parents don’t know what’s going on.”