I moved to London in 2008. I was living in South London before I met my partner, and then moved in with him in Leytonstone. Then in 2017 we bought a property in Leyton.
London's always had a bit of an undercurrent of criminality and drugs, and when we moved to Leyton there was that undercurrent, but it wasn’t too in your face.
We lived on a road of terraced houses five minutes from Francis Road where there is a bakery and a deli. I think they’re trying to call it Leyton Village now. There were pockets of neighbours who would do litter picks and try to look after the area. Without the drug dealing and the crime, it would be quite a nice place to live.
But then something changed. Just before the pandemic, the drug dealing and drug taking really ramped up.
It was on our doorstep. We would get the local crack users coming into our front garden daily and smoking on our doorstep. We were never unfortunate enough to have somebody defecate in the garden, but other residents were.
There was a drug den opposite our house that we managed to get closed down with the help of the council, but only after jumping through so many hoops. But then another pops up, so you get the footfall of users again.
Without the drug dealing and the crime, it would be quite a nice place to live
In 2019 there was a girl that was mugged right outside our house. Somebody had caught her going around a corner and whipped her bag off of her. At that point we had security cameras installed.
We would check them in the morning, and there would be at least two or three people walking on the street at night, trying every door handle to get into cars. We had our car ransacked. They would take loose change that was in the car, bags of sweets, and glove boxes would be rummaged through. If you had a pair of glasses that you'd left in the car, or sunglasses they'd be gone. Everything down to power leads and USB phone chargers was taken as well.
Post pandemic is when it really got out of hand. There would be three or four drug deals a day. Across the street every Saturday a drug dealer would come on a bike, and there would be a queue of users collecting their drugs. They would form an orderly queue to pick up their crack – we used to call it the Argos click and collect service.
It was mainly homeless people, and we knew it was crack, because as soon they got their pouches, it would go straight in their pipes, in somebody's doorway or behind a car.
And then if you went for a walk in the afternoon, you might see the same dealer on their bike in another area of Leyton.
It was scary. You kind of had to have your wits about you, especially if you were coming home in the evening. Some of the addicts could be quite confrontational. We don’t have kids but there were a lot of families on the street, and it’s not a nice thing for young children to see.
At this point I started ramping up reports to the police and the council. But they didn't have capacity, the power or the will to fully get it under control. Trying to provide evidence was an absolute joke, because the systems wouldn't take various formats. We’d try to share Nest CCTV footage to better aid the police in establishing who the ring leaders were, and they’d say: “We can’t open that link in the police network”.
I got bored of reporting it, because nothing happens. We were having regular meetings with the police and the council, but there was no money for them, so they were powerless to do anything
So we said, if we give all the evidence in a Google Drive link, can you open that? And they’d say “Oh no, we can’t open Google Drive”. It was ridiculous, honestly.
I got bored of reporting it, because nothing happens. We were having regular meetings with the police and the council, but there was no money for them, so they were powerless to do anything.
After three years of filing reports we were just getting nowhere. It was the same excuses from the police and council. So we decided that point, if we can move out of London, let's do it. Things are not getting any better within the area, we thought. I needed to be closer to my family and fortunately, we could move with work. So in 2023 we upped and left.
We've gone from a two bedroom flat to a three bedroom detached house in Lincolnshire. We don't see any drug dealing, we don't see any drug taking – most streets are quiet. The pace is so different. You're not rushing around. We’ve got a massive garden which keeps us busy. If we pop to the shop, yes, we lock our doors, but they might be open, and we don't think, “who’s gonna have gone in and nicked the lawn mower.”
See also: How crime levels in ‘lawless’ London rank compared to other world cities
If I missed anything about London, it would be the convenience, but other than that, not a great deal.
I would say the blame lies with central government in terms of funding for the police and potentially the local council. And money is a big driver, but I think there's a lot of efficiency that they could all work on. Don't put obstacles in the way of people reporting things, otherwise nothing will get done.
As told to Claudia Cockerell
