New Glasgow council leader says he'd support balaclava ban

The leader of Glasgow City Council says he'd support a ban on people wearing balaclavas in the city.

It's after Nottingham became one of the first cities in the UK to introduce the restriction - allowing police to ask people to remove them if they reasonably believe they're being used to hide their identity to commit crime or anti-social behaviour.

Ricky Bell, who was appointed leader of the Glasgow City Council last week, told Clyde 1: "The only reason you would wear a balaclava if you're going to hang around the city centre is so that you can't be identified, so I would be very supportive of saying that's not acceptable."

Mr Bell, who was Deputy Leader under Susan Aitken before she stepped down from the role after almost a decade, also says he's focused on tackling the city's housing crisis, and is backing calls for a pause on housing asylum seekers in the local authority.

He told Clyde 1: "It's not fair that Glasgow's virtually funding the housing crisis for the whole of Scotland."

Glasgow has the highest number of Home Office-assisted asylum seekers in the UK, with 3,938 people currently housed in the city.

Ricky Bell says putting a stop to applications would help ease pressures on services.

"There are local authorities who surround Glasgow that have got empty homes at the moment, and Glasgow's got all these people with nowhere to put them, so it doesn't make any sense to me that we can't say, we'll house you but it'll be in North Lanarkshire or one of the other surrounding councils, rather than saying everyone has the right to be housed in Glasgow."

Mr Bell is also committing to making the safety of women in the city a top priority of his.

"One of the big challenges is that it's a gender thing, and guys don't really get as much of being hassled as women do, and I'm very conscious of that. So I have to make sure that I'm not being dismissive of it because it doesn't happen to me. I want the police, the centre, the BID people, all to come round the table and see what they can bring so we can come up with an action plan.

"If people have anxiety and are afraid of coming into the city, that impacts on restaurants, on bars, nightclubs, picture houses, theatres, all of those things. So we need to address that concern and be able to demonstrate that we're doing something about that."

When asked if he acknowledged problems in the city around rising crime, anti-social behaviour, and drug-taking, particularly around St Enoch Square and the Four Corners, he said: "You do see drug dealing down in that part of the city. Even at 7:30am, 8am, I've seen people doing drug deals, and that's why I'm having this meeting with police, to talk about what else they can do."

It's understood Mr Bell is meeting with Chief Superintendent Emma Croft, who is Divisional Commander for Greater Glasgow, this week.

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