Councillors are “disappointed” over the lack of support over anti-social behaviour on an Aberystwyth road.

Councillor Kerry Ferguson and Cllr Endaf Edwards organised a public meeting on 20 September, after Rheidol Ward residents raised concerns regarding anti-social behaviour.

“The main concerns they originally had was the level of drugs being taken blatantly in the street, especially with the amount of families,” Cllr Ferguson said.

“The other issue is drinking during the day, we can’t pinpoint that people are being kicked out of a pub, they’re there all day - they’re drinking in the castle and on the prom. From there comes banging on doors, shouting, fighting, and there was that stabbing before Christmas.”

The public meeting was held so residents “could air their concerns” after not “getting that far with police”.

“After the meeting, I wrote a trigger letter to the council, to housing associations, as well as Ceredigion MP Ben Lake and Senedd Members.

“I heard back from a housing association and no one else. It then transpired that the council ordered a problem solving group meeting on 10 November off the back of the letter.”

After collating evidence from their Facebook group for the November meeting, Cllr Ferguson postponed the second public meeting, on 18 October, to await the results of the council meeting.

“I put it in the Facebook group and they all agreed to postpone the meeting and said ‘let’s focus on getting the evidence’. That was really positive, we were happy with that.

“It then ended up with this game of chasing the council for an answer. Eventually I heard that some had Covid-19 and were off sick. But before Christmas I was told the police would be putting a statement out about it.

“This is not good enough, nobody got back to us to tell us more. It just seemed like a closed case.

“County Cllr Edwards wants to chase down the council a bit more to try and get an answer. But I think we’re going to have another meeting to kick start it again. It’s a huge problem, and it’s not going to go away with a problem solving group.”

The group are hoping to have another meeting over the coming weeks, and will be inviting the council, various housing associations, the police, and Mr Lake, who has been “incredibly supportive”, to attend.

She added there are issues with the number of housing association houses in the area: “They appreciated that we’re all human and people need a place to live. But it’s the sheer number of associations and from what I’ve been told from residents, I haven’t looked into it myself, there are a couple of landlords on South Road who rent houses to the council in the area. The council has denied it.

“One house is for recovering alcoholics another next door is for youth offenders, the two don’t marry well.”

Ceredigion Council said they are “continuing to work with the police and other agencies to resolve problems experienced by residents”.