Over the last three months Nexus have been involved in several sites where illegal parties or gatherings have taken place, leaving trails of destruction behind them. The prompts two questions here at our customer service centre. Firstly - why have these parties suddenly come back into the public eye, are they happening more or it it just that they are reported more and have come to our attention? Secondly - how can we stop them?
Research on this issue took me past an interesting article from the Guardian detailing the role of social media.
You may be interested to know that in the aftermath of one incident a Nexus customer service agent tracked the organisers though Facebook - the scale of the operation was staggering as was the professionalism - but one thing really stood out. Many of the attendees did not realise that the party that had attended was on private property and potentially was dangerous. People were writing to to organisers asking if anyone had handed phones and bank cards in, it was like those people had attended a licensed night club in the west end!
Stopping these parties can prove extremely difficult, with text messages being sent to registered partygoers with as little as an hours notice. At Nexus we advise our customers to have regular inspections on empty sites and to remain vigilant at all times, large build ups of people in an area have historically meant a chance that an incident may be about to occur.
As squatter legislation for commercial properties does not give the same powers as that as the recently updated residential act it can be a case of responding to the aftermath and working in partnership with all involved parties to resecure the buildings.
I would be very interested in your thoughts on this subject!
Marc