YOUTHS in Addingham are not the yobs and hooligans they are portrayed as, according to a

resident.

Collett Munroe, 42, of Rose Terrace, said that the solution to the problem of old people being frightened by youngsters at the Memorial Hall was to bring both sides together.

"This problem has been blown out of all proportion," said Ms Munroe, who has a 17-year-old son.

Her plea has been backed up at a recent National Neighbourhood Watch conference, attended by Geoffrey Vere, the chairman of the Wharfe Valley Neighbourhood Watch Association.

"Young people are part of the solution not the problem. This was the overriding message delegates took home with them," said a statement issued by the conference.

At the start of the conference Cambridgeshire Army Cadet Force demonstrated the mistakes adults and the elderly can make by judging youngsters at face value, based on the clothes they choose to wear.

The challenge of how to involve young people in community life featured strongly in the programme with many suggestions coming from the under 18s themselves.

A spokesman said: "Environmental clean-up projects to create play and sports areas or help the elderly tidy up their own gardens were popular activities, as was an award winning bicycle loan pool for children who have no

bicycles of their own."

The problems in Addingham are generated by groups of youths

congregating in the Memorial Hall car park.

Parish councillor Alan Jerome said that older people felt

intimidated by the youths when leaving the Memorial Hall in the evening.

Ms Munro, who lives only 300 metres from the Memorial Hall, said that the parish council in Addingham were out of touch with the young people in the village and that the problem of alcohol had been overstated.

She wrote to the Gazette saying that she had never felt intimidated by the youths and said that the facilities for village youngsters were wasted because the youth club only opened one night a week because of staff shortages.

But village Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator Harry Rowlinson is campaigning for a new bylaw to prevent drinking in open spaces.

At a recent Police Community Forum Meeting held in the village, Mr Rowlinson said: "I can't see why a bylaw could not be passed to stop drinking in the streets."

Forum chairman Martin Millgate said that such a bylaw would be the responsibility of the local authority. Ms Munro said that the solution to the problem was for those in power and

authority to get out on the streets and talk to the youths whose only crime is that they were bored.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.