When vandals strike ...

Yesterday and today, special arrangements have had to be made at Garden Fields school, where I was an LEA governor for 16 years and am still an associate governor, to get the children into the school after vandals burnt down a shed on the school site, creating a hazard. For the rest of this week, both Garden Fields and the adjacent St Albans Music School will have to be closed while the damage is cleared - resulting in the cancellation of a special event at the music school for which a lot of work had been done.

So the firebugs, whoever they are, have ruined the week for several hundred children. It is absolutely infuriating.

The police will never be able to have enough people to solve every crime but we do need to take some of the burden of administration and regulation away so they can spend less time on trivial issues and paperwork and more on solving crimes that matter. And we must make sure that sentences are sharp enough to provide an effective deterrent.

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