Here you can find details of No Deal, set out in response to the various enquiries CPCG has had about the initiative and CPCG's role in it. We'll update it periodically as No Deal progresses. At the bottom of the page you can feedback your views. You can find out what other people are saying here and read periodic monitoring updates here.

What is No Deal?

No Deal is a cohesive response by the local community, the police and the local authority to address a problem which undermines one of the most lively and diverse town centres in London – Brixton. The problem is belligerent street dealing in drugs.

How does it work?

Police will target street dealers of illegal drugs, and their customers. That will include cannabis. Because dealers often escape arrest by ensuring that they are only caught with 'personal quantities' of the drug, Brixton Town Centre has been declared a 'drug problem area'. That means that under the ACPO guidelines, police can arrest people with personal quantities of cannabis. The initiative will run from December 2005 to March 2006.

Read Borough Commander's presentation to No Deal Town Hall meeting.

Read CPCG presentation to No Deal Town Hall meeting.

Will everyone found in possession be arrested and what will happen to them?

Whether or not to arrest is down to the individual officer's judgement within the overall objectives of the inititiative. Of those arrested, their subsequent treatment will also be for the judgement of officers. They may be given a formal warning (with confiscation) at the police station, they may recieve a police caution or they may be charged. Further down the line, those subject to repeated charge and convicton may have Anti Social Behavior Orders sought against them, excluding them from the Town Centre.

Is this some sort of back-door reclassification of cannabis?

No. No Deal uses exiting provisions within the current classification of cannabis as a Class C drug.

Drugs Stop and Searches, especially in regard to cannabis, have been a contentious issue in Lambeth and in Brixton particularly. Why is CPCG supporting this?

Because of the overwhelming sense in the community that there is a serious problem that needs addressing. The police have told us that they need to use the power of arrest, in this locality, to increase their chances of doing so.

What makes CPCG confident that the power will be used proportionately and that we won't see a rise in community-police tensions on the back of heavy handed policing in this area, as has sometimes happened in the past?

• Use of the power will mainly be resticted to nominated officers, generally those in the team that polices Brixton Town Centre. They will be briefed before and after each shift.
• Statistics of Stops and Searches, Arrests and subsequent decisions will be reviewed on a fortnightly basis by a project team which includes CPCG.
• Most importantly, local people's experiences of the initiative (good and bad) can be fed back to CPCG though this website (below) or at our monthly, public meetings.

You can also feedback your views and perceptions directly 'from the street' using SMS text messaging.

Text 80010 and start your message with 'NODEAL'

(As far as we know, this is the first case of a policing initiative being subject to live feedback using this method).

• A community panel has been recruited which will be regularly polled throughout.

If the initiative drifts from the objectives agreed by the police, the local authority, local councillors, the Brixton Area Forum and CPCG, we shall be the first to say so.

The local press coverage says this is a 'Crack down on cannabis use'. That's not what CPCG is saying here.

Don't believe everything you read in the papers. Headlines sell papers and bring in advertising revenue!

What do you think?

Please use the form below to post up your views or experiences of No Deal, good or bad. (Last name is not mandatory, and won't in any event be posted on the website)

(CPCG is registered under the Data Protection Act and will not hand on your details to the police, the local authority or any other third party).