Vice girls tarnish town's image

Drivers coming up through Redlam are having to pass prostitutes touting for business at Whalley Banks before reaching the gateway as the road becomes King Street several hundred yards further on.

Some £250,000 has been spent on King Street, a main road into town, to link it with the nearby Cathedral Quarter of town, through Fleming Square, Darwen Street and Church Street. But prostitutes have been congregating around a phone box in Whalley Banks and using it as an 'office'.

Shopkeepers in the area claim the problem is costing them business and want the police to stamp the practice out.

Adrian Willis, owner of Happy Occasions Newsagents, has started two petitions in a bid for action after claiming he was threatened by prostitutes armed with a knife last week.

He has also installed a CCTV system to monitor his car after it was vandalised.

But he claims if no action is taken against the prostitutes, he will film the registrations of kerb crawlers' cars and hand them to the police.

Mr Willis added: "There is nothing around here welcoming anybody to Blackburn. If that is what the gateway is all about they have got it wrong.

"Prostitutes have been propositioning customers and begging for money. It is damaging business. We are fed-up totally.

"You don't like going out at night, there are kerb crawlers all over the place.

"We don't want the police to move them on as somebody else will complain then. We want them to stop it happening."

Another Whalley Banks businessman, Kristian Howson said his 11-year-old sister witnessed a prostitute having full sex with a man in the front seat of a car in the street last week.

He added: "We have three years on our lease but want to move on because of it all. They are there from 4.30pm and have propositioned a customer.

"We find needles outside and used condoms when we come to work in the morning."

Whalley Banks is on the fringes of the Bank Top area which has long been associated with prostitution.

Sgt Phil Davies, in charge of town centre policing which covers prostitution, said the problem may be as a result of work done to keep prostitutes out of the nearby residential areas of Bank Top.

He added: "Clearly a problem like this just doesn't go away - if we put pressure on one area, it drives it further down.

"What we try and do is tackle the anti-social aspect. We have taken the block of complaints in residential areas to target the kerb crawlers.

"It is an offence to solicit for the purposes of prostitution but to prove that there has to be evidence and those who work in Blackburn are often dressed informally so they aren't your classic girls. Most wear a t-shirt and trousers.

"The current options of the courts is just a £50 or £60 fine for it. We try and deter the women from prostitution with the help of other agencies.

"We won't get rid of it overnight - we want long-term solutions rather than short-term knee-jerk policies.

"If the shopkeepers would like to contact me, I will be happy to discuss it with them."

Blackburn MP Jack Straw confirmed that he had sent a letter to British Telecom on October 16 raising the problem of prostitutes using the phone box.

A spokesman for BT said they wrote to the police on October 29 about the phone box and received a reply from the divisional commander on November 3 in which he said an officer would be in touch.

He added: "The police haven't been back in touch.

"We are now going to follow it up with the police and see if we can help."

The spokesman said they could assist by preventing the phone box taking incoming calls or withholding its number when it dials out.

A police spokesman said he could not explain why no-one had got back in touch with BT.

But Chief Inspector Andy Pratt added: "We are constantly monitoring activity around phone boxes in the town and have been in touch with BT regarding others.

"If this one is generating such levels of concern, then we will look into it again."

Coun Andy Kay declined to comment on the prostitutes operating in proximity to the gateway."