BEWDLEY residents who are "frightened to death to come out of their house at night" have been urged to report more young thugs - after police said problems were not "sufficient" enough to warrant tough banning orders.

Intimidating behaviour, such as vandalism and verbal abuse, had to be reported to show on paper that people in the town were suffering from the behaviour of teenage yobs, members of Bewdley Town Council said.

Their comments came after Bewdley police beat manager, Nigel Barter, reported that anti-social behaviour orders - which ban bad behaviour and youths from certain streets - were proving hard to come by for Bewdley.

His report said: "Despite the public perception of problems here, the potential candidates for ASBOs barely touch sufficient misbehaviour to justify such action".

The police's attitude was "unbelievable", said councillor Max Keen, who reports to the council on law and order issues.

Blaming the "system" for the reply instead of PC Barter, Mr Keen said: "According to the statistics, there is not a great problem in Bewdley but those of us who live (in the town) probably disagree with that one."

He added residents needed to report bad behaviour because "if it becomes a statistic is goes on record. If it goes on record it shows up on the police records".

He warned: "There are residents that I know of, particularly the elderly, who are frightened to death to come out of their house at night."