LIGHTING and CCTV are still the best options for eradicating anti-social behaviour in Gunnislake Car Park, maintain parish councillors, despite advice by the community safety officer to try other simple measures.

In a letter to the council David Parker who works for Cornwall Council said that while CCTV was an option it should not be selected as the first option.

He recommended enlisting the support of the community, encouraging people to respect each other, asking the PCSO to visit the pubs, encouraging parents of teenagers to keep involved in what was going on and getting the local primary school involved to put over an early message to children and get parents involved.

Mr Parker said: 'Bearing in mind that parents of junior school children often have older siblings, so involving the local junior school could also help, this will also help encourage the respect idea at a younger age and send the respect message home to the parents.'

He said should the respect angle not work, improving the lighting might be the next option as this might have the desired effect without the need for CCTV.

Cllr Dorothy Kirk said the response from the community safety officer was 'derisory': 'Where you have a large unsupervised space like this bordered by sheltered housing you are always going to have problems.

'There have been incidents of some violent attacks in this car park and part of our responsibility is to make sure people are secure. If we start at the bottom we are going to get nowhere. I think we should push for CCTV and lighting.'

Councillors said encouraging people to respect each other was sometimes a difficult task and not going to be enough.

Cllr John Roberts said: 'The response is a load of rubbish, the simpliest solution is to get lighting. We have it in Harrowbarrow Village Hall car park. It goes off at midnight and goes on if someone comes in.'

Members agreed that motion-activated lighting was as good a deterrent as any to stop people committing crime or anti-social behaviour in Gunnislake Car Park.

The parish council agreed to write back to Cornwall Council saying it was not satisfied with the response and would like the option of lighting and CCTV pursued.