Wolverhampton City Centre

Anti-social behaviour

Anti-social behaviour continues to be a focus of our activity. We have seen an improved position in terms of young people coming into the city centre over the summer but are keeping an eye on issues with the Lime bikes.

On 30th June 2026 we served a closure notice on The Hair Shop, Lichfield Street as a result of chronic anti-social behaviour and exploitation concerns. This shut the shop with immediate effect. On 2nd July we attended Walsall Magistrates Court and presented information in support of a closure order. This was granted by the court and shut the shop for a further 3 months. We take a stepped approach to dealing with anti-social behaviour but this was deemed necessary given concerns around young people being able to access illicit vapes and criminal activity linked to the premises. The closure of this shop has reduced problems at the locality significantly. We are aware of other problem venues in the locality that we will focus on with partners.

Anti-social behaviour linked to young people remains a priority for us throughout September with a clearer focus on rough sleepers who seem to be frequenting some locations in larger groups again.

During August we will continue our patrols of keys locations, Queen Street, Dudley Street, bus station and St Peter Gardens.

We know we have key locations within the city where anti-social behaviour is more likely to occur. Our incident logs provide data to direct our patrols so we are in the right places at the right time. A Public Space Protection Order is in place for the city centre to provide a long term approach to reducing incidents of anti-social behaviour that is committed by groups of people and those wearing face coverings to conceal their identity. Residents, visitors and businesses can enjoy a safer space without fear of confrontation.

Report anti-social behaviour so we are aware and can target our patrols. Whilst we always want to reduce the number of crimes that take place, we want recording to be a true reflection of the problems so we will continue to encourage reporting. We are aware the locations can change where anti-social behaviour happens and this can depend on the time of year and weather conditions.

Reducing public place violence

We had a busy bank holiday weekend at the end of August and our night-time economy staff reported attending jobs back to back that evening. It is always good to see the city full of people having a good night out but is disappointing when we see a higher number of assaults. Investigations are ongoing and officers are securing CCTV to assist their enquiries and identify suspects.

Every Friday and Saturday night we continue to have dedicated night-time economy officers working until the early hours. They visit city centre venues and work with security teams to prevent violence and disorder. They also carry out patrols to identify perpetrators of physical and sexual violence. Officers are regularly involved in searches for missing or people in crisis, leading to us being able to get support.

On an almost daily basis, our officers carry out targeted Guardian patrols in key hot spot areas. We now have a new additional area to patrol and focus our efforts with a view to reducing knife related crime. The concentrated area sees officers carry out regular patrols and work with partners from the local authority to consider problem solving activity in addition to a focus on pursuing offenders. The team have had some good arrests over the last 4 weeks that have been publicised. Two key robbery offenders have also been arrested and dealt with for several offences as a result of thorough investigations by officers from our Neighbourhood Crime Team.

As part of our daily work we review 24 hour crime and also understand daily, weekly and monthly data. The city centre still sees violent offences - this refers to both violence with injury and violence without injury offences so includes lower level arguments. During the warmer weather and longer days, we still see slightly elevated numbers in the daytime and night time economy and we are managing ongoing cases. This is predominantly around serious youth violence. This is measured where we have crimes with victims under the age of 25. Some of these offences are linked to the other priority of ASB as issues that start at a low level escalate into bigger problems.

Project Servator operations have seen officers from across Wolverhampton come and work in the city centre.

We are encouraged to see that members of the public are reporting crimes to police and city centre premises. Crime figures alone do not tell the whole story and although we see a rise in some offence types being reported to us, we hope this is the public trusting we will act on the information and get an outcome in line with their wishes.

Safer Towns initiative

1st July saw the launch of our summer initiative in the city centre where we work to make the city feel safer. We have set ourselves priorities and these are joint objectives with our partners in the Community Safety Team and wider partnership. This work continues up until the end of September 2026. We have been sharing stories of good arrests and proactive work that has been undertaken over the summer. This has been balanced against the increased number of calls for service and our staff carrying out additional response duties to ensure the public get a decent response when they call us.

We are looking to respond to calls promptly, ensure we complete our mandated patrols in high crime areas, carry out weekly safer nights engagements and patrols and sustain high levels of arrests and positive outcomes for robbery, theft from person, violence and retail crime related matters.

We have had arrests for violent offences, shoplifting, fail to appear warrants, sexual offences and robbery. We continue to bring as many offenders to justice as possible - albeit the courts decide their fate.

Please look out for the #safertownssummer on social media.