This is a grisly story indeed, and I'm not trying to understate police culpability. However, my understanding is that Mrs Pilkington made 30 phone calls in 10 years. That is an average of just 3 a year, and that would not give the police the impression of an out of control situation.

As a long standing community activist, who has been targetted by anti-social yobs, I fully understand the nightmares that people can suffer at the hands of these creeps.

But neither can I overemphasise the importance of getting on the bugle to Plod whenever trouble emerges. The police may not be able to attend, if they are busy with more serious crimes. And truth to tell anti-social behaviour is given a far lower priority than it often deserves.

Even so, the police will log the call, and they will use the information to determine where the anti-social hotspots are. Once identified they can then target those areas and apprehend the miscreants.

In all cases, ask for a log number. Then, go and raise the matter with your local residents association, local councillors, council officials, MP, police forums and anywhere else you can. And keep on raising it until the trouble is dealt with.

This is a far from ideal situation because usually all it does is move the problem on to somebody else's patch. All I can say is that my own quality of life, and that of the other people in my neighbourhood has improved immensely since I managed to encourage a few people started taking action.

And while you're talking to all those councillors etc, see if something can't be done to strike at the causes of anti-social behaviour. I'm thinking of things like education, and of providing youth facilities so that kids won't feel there's nothing else for them to do but hang around street corners causing trouble.