Letter: 'I will not be returning to Bournemouth for a holiday'

Even after more than thirty years living in Italy where I run a bilingual school, I still think of it as home. Until my father passed away five years ago, I returned regularly, and Bournemouth has always been the place I was proud to bring people to see.

I have just spent three days there with two fifteen-year-old students in my care, staying at the top of Hinton Road, as part of a trip from Italy. I had spoken to them beforehand about the seaside town I loved. I am sorry to say I was ashamed of what I found, and I feel I owe it to the town to tell you plainly.

Westover Road, once one of the finest streets in the town, had people visibly intoxicated and unwell in the street in broad daylight, some in their own vomit, and men openly harassing young women like the girls in my care, as they walked past.

This was not a one-off; it was the general atmosphere. The larger shops that gave the town centre its life are long gone, and boarded-up units and neglected streets have taken their place. I felt genuinely sorry for long-standing businesses such as Robert Old, an institution on Westover Road since 1909, who have to trade with this on their doorstep.

It is not only the town centre. The grass in the parks near the beach is scorched, apparently having gone months without water or care. On the beach, the steps down to the sand are so buried they are barely usable. Everywhere I looked, the impression was the same: a town that is simply not being looked after.

I am genuinely curious as to what has happened. Friends have pointed to the shift to online shopping, high commercial rents, and the rising cost of living since Brexit, and no doubt all of these play a part.

But those pressures are national, and they do not fully explain what I saw. I have just come from Portsmouth, a town I always thought of as less exclusive than Bournemouth, and I found it refreshingly clean and felt safe there.

So, the decline cannot simply be blamed on forces beyond the council's control. Surely actively incentivising retail investment is crucial if the town is to survive as a shopping destination at all.

I would also add that I find it unfair to lay any of this at the door of the immigrants in the town. They were not the ones behaving badly. On the contrary, the families I saw enjoying the beach together were doing no harm to anyone. The problem I am describing is public drunkenness, drug use and harassment.

I would ask, plainly: why is this behaviour tolerated in the town centre when it plainly would not be tolerated in other towns — or, dare I say, even a short distance away in Westbourne?

Public drunkenness, drug use and the harassment of women passing by cannot be allowed to become the accepted character of the central streets. It is unacceptable, and it is driving away exactly the visitors and families the town depends on.

More than that, I wonder whether the town's whole direction needs rethinking. Bournemouth seems to have leaned into being a club and pub party destination, and that culture brings much of the behaviour I saw.

Surely steering the town away from that and towards being an upmarket shopping venue, with exclusive restaurants and quality businesses, as it was in the past, would do far more to restore its character and its prosperity.

I should tell you honestly that I will not be returning to Bournemouth for a holiday, nor suggesting that my students go there.

I would not be comfortable recommending the town to Italian families with adolescents, as it simply isn't safe.

I would wholeheartedly recommend spending time in Swanage instead, which felt like a different world. I would like to stress that I take no pleasure in writing that about my own hometown.

I do appreciate that there are many factors at play here, and that anyone willing to work for the good of the town is worth more than all the people merely complaining.

But I genuinely would be grateful to know what BCP Council is doing, or plans to do, about the state of the town centre, the maintenance of the parks and beach, and the anti-social behaviour and public drug and alcohol use in the central streets.

N. Nauti

Italy