Cllr Hannah Galley was elected to represent Abbey Road (St John's Wood) on Thursday, 4 July. In her maiden speech at tonight's Full Council, Hannah highlighted the urgent need for action on crime and anti-social behaviour across St John's Wood.

I would like to start my maiden speech by saying thank you to my wonderful predecessor - and friend - Amanda Langford.

She made a hugely positive impact on Abbey Road, bringing together local groups and residents.

She was exceptional on the doorstep often stopping by for a coffee with people she met. Amanda is exactly the kind of person you want in politics – she loves and cares about people.

Abbey Road is the most delightful area of London to represent and live in. I’m not a Londoner by birth. I grew up in a small town sandwiched between North Yorkshire and Cumbria. But I moved to London over a decade ago and soon fell in love with St John’s Wood.

You might assume that North West London and the North West of England have little in common. But in the three years I’ve spent living here, I’ve discovered that both places have the strongest possible sense of community.

Those local to Abbey Road are fiercely protective of its place and its character. I only had to visit the St John’s Wood summer festival in June to see this all come together.

And Abbey Road is an area steeped in history, from the Lord’s cricket ground to the world-famous recording studios. Over fifty years after The Beatles released Abbey Road, musical fans still flock to the crossing to emulate the most famous band in history every hour of the day. I tried - in vain - to find another zebra crossing that is Grade-II listed but it appears that ours is unique.

So while our sense of community in Abbey Road might be stronger than ever, it has not halted a wave crime and anti-social behaviour on our streets. And I’m afraid to say that the impact this is having on our community is huge.

I’ve been alarmed at the rise in muggings and phone thefts on our streets and have been the victim of this myself, twice, in recent years.

Jogging around the perimeter of Regent’s Park, I was grabbed by masked men on a moped trying to wrestle my phone out of my hand. They didn’t stand a chance against my extremely loud screams!

But the next time I was not so lucky. My phone was cleanly whipped out of my hand outside Camden tube.

For a long time, this city has not felt safe. In my ward, children in particular, are becoming a target for phone theft.

Residents have described how gangs will travel to the area to intercept kids as they leave school, either to walk home or take the tube. Alarmingly this sometimes happens at knife point in what are clearly premeditated acts.

Since I took office in July, I’ve been helping residents and shopkeepers on Blenheim Terrace. This quiet, lovely street has unfortunately become a target of a sustained crime wave.

Brazen shoplifters have repeatedly targeted a small family-owned corner shop. Scooters have been performing reconnaissance on the street, making use of a small passageway. And on Saturday an absolutely vile anti-Semitic incident took place in broad daylight.

Elsewhere, quiet residential streets are plagued by drugs. Residents are greeted by the sight of people visibly taking and selling cannabis outside their homes. In Scott Ellis Gardens, teenagers are disgracefully climbing onto the roof of the building to throw illicit parties. Those residents with young children are rightly scared and intimidated.

Despite the best efforts of our local policing team, in residential streets up and down Abbey Road, people are now taking policing into their own hands, paying out of their own pocket for security patrols.

Now, I do welcome the Council’s investment in CCTV cameras, and we are in the process of deploying a number of these across our ward. However, my colleagues and I have discovered that there are very few locations where they can actually be situated. Smaller lampposts on residential streets will not support them, nor can we attach them to TFL-owned street lights, eliminating many locations on Finchley Road. For smaller streets like Blenheim Terrace with quiet, secluded corners, this is not going to solve their problems.

I also want to raise what support and training is being given to our local policing teams to help access the footage from these cameras. In conversations, it seems that while Charring Cross can access footage if a crime has been reported, our local team don’t currently have the means of monitoring the cameras. The bottom line is that the Mayor of London has not got a grip on policing in this city. Ensuring our communities are safe is non-negotiable. It’s the very least our residents deserve and under this Labour Council and a Labour Mayor, it has continued to decline.

In short, we need more neighbourhood policing. We need CCTV cameras fitted not just to our main roads but smaller side streets to ensure residents and businesses feel safe.