The success of a pilot programme introduced to stamp out a Papamoa gang issue will be rolled out across other Tauranga suburbs.

Following a successful exercise in Hartford Avenue, Papamoa, police sergeant Phil Gillbanks told a council committee this week that they're now focussing on the Links Avenue area of Mount Maunganui.

Police sergeant Phil Gillbanks (centre) is turning his atention to other areas of Tauranga after "cleaning up" a Papamoa's Hartford Avenue.

'We're looking at areas we could work with to turn a community around,” Phil told Tauranga City Council Community Development Committee, 'to try and take it out of its current way of thinking and bring it in line with other communities around it.

'What we recognised with the Hartford Avenue community in Papamoa and the off-shooting streets was that there was an issue of youth gangs that were beginning to take a bit of a foothold in that area.

'We realised there were six criminal groups - some being patched, organised crime gangs and others being affiliates of it.”

With young people in particular, it was a small number of the population attracting a large percentage of police time and resources going into that area.

'And it was having a negative impact on the community as a whole,” explains Phil. 'We set about thinking about trying to change that.”

Police did a letter box drop to let people know they were interested in finding out what the local issues were and residents' perceptions of the area, and followed it up two weeks later with a door-knock.

'The biggest issues were the way the place looked, roaming dogs and the prevalence of patched gang members roaming the street,” says Phil. There was the odd bit of disorder, but the biggest one was roaming dogs.”

Once council had cleaned up the dog issue, next on the agenda was turning around the image of the area.

'When I looked at the street, I thought there was no reason why it couldn't look like my street,” he adds.

Most of it was simple - berms being tidied up, street side carparks being bollarded off and liaison with Housing New Zealand and the Ministry of Social development to put pressure on known problem houses.

Lyn Grove roundabout in Papamoa. Photo: Supplied.

And one of their main problem residents has been arrested, says Phil. The man escaped from the court house and was arrested on the Waikareao estuary mudflats. He is now serving a five-year sentence.

Police also are working with the YMCA about a youth project

Neighbours Day on March 28-29 was adopted to carry out some simple, low-cost initiatives 'to try and tidy the place up and bring the community in to be a major participant,” he adds.

With police, community members and others, fences were painted around the park, some trees removed and more were planted on the Lyn Grove/Hartford Avenue roundabout.

A CCTV camera has also been installed at the roundabout, meaning police will be able to react quicker when there are burnouts.

'The people who came out and assisted were all hugely positive about their area,” says Phil, 'so it's a major beginning.

'My aim is to try and bring that community out to the stage where they can look around at what they have got and take some pride in that themselves, no matter what else is going on in their lives.”

As a result of the initiative, an additional 119 households have joined the Papamoa neighbourhood support network. The government ministries are working on a national plan for areas of high welfare dependency and the police are looking at other areas.

'We can't do them all at once,” says Phil. 'We don't want to be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.”