A CITY retailer is at the end of her tether after having stock damaged by a group of youths congregating in the area around her premises.

Felicity Mackenzie, proprietor of Creative Lighting, claims that trading has become next to impossible in the past 18 months as large groups of teenagers use High Town as a football pitch.

"We and many other traders have our signage damaged, balls kicked into our doorways and on two occasions I have had to shut because trading was not possible under these conditions."

Recently a football was kicked into the shop, overturning a display and damaging stock.

"We see our customers turning away from the fear of being hit by a ball or jeered at," says Ms Mackenzie, who adds: "We need action in Hereford before our city turns into a derelict and dead city where independent shops and businesses have no alternative but to close."

A spokesman for Herefordshire police said: "Our aim is always to deploy to this type of nuisance behaviour and we will endeavour to send an officer to deal with those responsible.

"This level of incident has to be balanced against other demands on resources at the time. The consequence of this requires us to prioritise the way we deploy available resources and, on this occasion, we were unable to attend immediately.

"However, the town centre beat manager made contact at the earliest opportunity and the matter is now being dealt with."

When Cynthia Spaull, city centre manager, learned of the problem, she added her support: "As soon as I became aware of Felicity's problem I got on to the police to encourage them to patrol Commercial Street on Saturdays, when the problem seems to be worst, and see if it can be dispelled and the youths persuaded to play football elsewhere.

"I can understand where Felicity is coming from. I know that some of the shops where the staff are all women feel especially vulnerable."