While working at Design Against Crime Research Centre, we designed a data collection toolkit for Camden Council to assess the impact of public seating on anti-social behaviour. The data collected would support better decision making when providing or removing public seating. 

Camden were facing issues of anti-social behaviour concentrated around ‘hot spot’ public benches: drug misuse, street drinking, littering, rowdy and nuisance behaviour were major concerns for local residents and the council. Camden had little information to go on when deciding to remove a bench or not following a complaint. Camden wanted to understand why some benches were consistently attracting anti-social behaviour and not others, sometimes only a few feet away.

We approached the brief by developing and testing an assessment framework and toolkit together with staff and officers on the ground. There were limitations on the time and resources available to staff so the toolkit had to be easy to complete and implement. To support this, the toolkit was designed to be used by any agency partners (e.g. police or safer neighbourhood teams) to help build a comprehensive dataset on design and environmental factors related to public seating and ASB. The toolkit collected information on:

• the design and location of benches, including the positioning of benches in relation to roads, paths and clusters
• pedestrian flows
• environmental factors such as lighting, trees, squares
• relationships to other amenities such as off-licences

The data collected would help ensure staff considered a range of factors when deciding on providing or removing public benches, such as: Is there an off-licence nearby? Will the bench face a road? Where is the main flow of pedestrians? We also provided a service blueprint for implementing the toolkit within Camden’s existing assessment protocol. The blueprint provided a clearer basis for collaboration within and beyond the Town Planning Department