Traffic chaos, bus services cut because of congestion, unhappy businesses hit by lost trade during the works and glitches such as uncovering dangers in buildings which have forced road closures.

After many months of looking like a chaotic building site, the upheaval appears to be diminishing and traders were looking forward to an upturn in business.

But now it appears the spruced up Church Street area appears to be acting as a magnet for unsavoury characters – beggars, drunks and mooning neds who have even forced one restaurant to shut its blinds to the street scenes.

Traders are unhappy and it is not a good image for the city centre to have customers and revellers harassed by drunks and aggressive beggars – particularly as the summer tourist season gets into full swing.

Whether there is any link between the Streetscape upgrade and the nuisance increase is unclear as certainly the Church Street/Old Town area does have a number of highly popular bars and nightspots which would be an attraction for troublemakers or those on the scrounge. Indeed, a number of bar managers do not believe those aggressively asking for money are real beggars.

It does, however, seem ironic that the nuisance has escalated since the area got its facelift.

The problem does appear to be being treated seriously with talks likely between the police and the Safer City Centre team which is currently collating the incidents and views of businsses.

The puzzle is: why has the problem been allowed to reach this stage? Most significant areas of the city centre are covered by CCTV.

Police patrols cannot be everywhere – but it has always been understood that the spy cameras would have a first alert function for officers to respond to.

If they are not getting a focus on drunks lying in doorways or passers-by being hassled, then what is being picked up?

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