Watch Out

He added: “People are threatening to kill my uncle and me. We don’t know who they are, they just rung up and threatened us. This is terrible, my brothers are innocent. This is harassment.”

Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, used his speech to the Labour Party conference today to acknowledge that the case exposed “an insufficient response to public anxiety” over anti-social behaviour.

Following the inquests, the youths were named with their parents Steven Simmons, 43, and his 44-year-old wife Susanne, as being partly responsible for the Pilkingtons' ordeal. The couple also has two younger sons aged 15 and 12.

Today there was a noticeable police presence in the street, with officers walking up and down speaking to residents, while other constables patrolled the area in a marked van.

A 52-year-old neighbour of the Simmons said the family should leave the street.

“I think it’s fair to call the children street rats. The parents don’t seem to be in control of them," he said. "They just seem to use the house as a meeting place, the parents just don’t seem to bother.”

Carol Sainsbury, 46, a full-time carer who lives in Bardon Road, said problems still persisted on the street.

“The youths are still out and about around here. I did see some bobbies out here on Thursday and Friday night when there were about 10 youths outside squawking. I told them there was a police riot van down the road and they just thought it was hilarious.”

Darren Hollis, who lived in the same street, told The Times that several vulnerable families had been targeted for years by residents whose children ran out of control and by the Simmons family in particular.

He said that the harassment grew to such a pitch that he had no choice but to flee his home with his wife, Gillian, and three teenage children. They discovered afterwards that they had fled on the day Ms Pilkington killed herself and Francecca.

Another neighbour recalled how one of the Simmons boys had callously reacted to hearing of the deaths in the run-up to Bonfire Night. The woman, a member of Neighbourhood Watch, said: “[The 16-year-old] said to me, ‘She thinks she is Guy Fawkes. She has torched herself’.”

During the inquests, the jury was told Ms Pilkington wrote twice to her local MP David Tredinnick, the Tory Member for Hinckley and Bosworth.

In her second letter, written in February 2007, the full-time carer wrote: “I don’t really know how to handle things anymore. How can I protect my teenagers from this sort of abuse? No one can help.

“I have had 11 years of misery. My hair is falling out. What do you do? Do you just let them take control of this lovely street? The kids on the street stop everyone living their lives.”

Today, Mr Tredinnick blamed the police and the Government for the "huge tragedy". He said: “It is very sad that it has taken something of this magnitude to bring these issues to the fore. The police have got to look at how they prioritise offences.”

He added: “On a broader level, there has been a complete failure of Government policies. What went on in Barwell, and what happens in other locations across the country, is that you have a tiny number of people, often youths and young men, holding communities to ransom.

“There is something patently absurd when we have an integrated community like Barwell being held to ransom by half a dozen people.”

Steven Simmons, an odd job man, appeared unruffled as he returned to his house today. “I have nothing to say, now get off my driveway or I will call police. It’s council property,” he said.

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