By 8am on a wet Wednesday, Ilfracombe High Street is already thick with the sweet scent of marijuana. It comes from under the arches beneath the old town hall, where, most mornings at around this time, a tangle of bodies is beginning to stir from last night’s drugs excesses.

‘We see them jacking up [injecting] in the street as we drive to work in the morning,’ says Steve, 52, a mechanic. ‘On park benches. In the street.’

And outside the Co-op, where two bedraggled individuals are smoking and drinking 8.4 per cent cider.

And on the steps to the Embassy Cinema, where a rotating band of down-and-outs, including Clifford Garlick and his pregnant friend, are slumped in the drizzle, drinking extra-strength beer and smoking joints.

Last week, I’m told, Clifford robbed the Co-op. ‘He just walked out at about 6pm with arms full of groceries,’ says Lily, who works in Johnny C’s Bar & Bistro.

‘I watched him and asked someone, “Should I call the police?” But they said, “No point. They’ll never come. He’s always doing it”.’

The Embassy Cinema is across the road from Johnny C’s, run by Johnny Christophides and his wife Angela Encarnacao, who also runs a laundry business and bridal boutique a few doors down.

Or at least she did, until last August when, at 4am one morning, Clifford smashed in the windows of Combe Bridal Boutique and pulled one of the wedding dresses, still on its mannequin, out through the broken glass and ran off with it.

‘He sold it for £300 and pleaded guilty when they caught him, but then didn’t bother to turn up for sentencing. Just sat there across the road, drinking and smoking and staring. For weeks the police did nothing at all,’ says Angela. ‘And he’s still there. He just sits there and stares at me.’

Sadly, his crimes are just a fraction of the problem in this beautiful north Devon seaside town.

Last week, five cars were broken into on a side road off the High Street. Another was broken into outside the big Lidl on the edge of town and someone’s epilepsy medication was stolen. ‘They’ll take anything!’ says mother-of-two Abigail, whose family have lived here for generations.

A fortnight ago, a couple of feral teenagers stole a mobility scooter belonging to Vera Street, a local lady in her 80s, and smashed it up in a frenzy of pointless violence.

Ilfracombe Mini Market has been closed since April for selling illegal cigarettes – a court order is plastered to the front window.

Earlier this month, the body of a young man in his 20s was found at Mullacott Industrial Estate on the outskirts of town. No foul play is suspected, but locals tell me they understand that he was troubled and had taken a lot of pills.

And antisocial behaviour – drinking, urinating, shouting, stripping off in the street, petty crimes and violence – is rife.

In fact, a month or so ago it all got so bad that, in desperation, the town council wrote to the police commissioner criticising the lack of police response to recent incidents, begging for more support, and telling her that increasing thefts, assaults and anti-social behaviour linked to deprivation had led to some firms in the town being forced to close.

‘As citizens, we should all be able to go about our daily lives. It is the police’s job to investigate crime, prosecute offenders and keep communities safe,’ they said.

‘Safe? Of course we don’t feel safe!’ says Steve. ‘It’s a lovely town, but I see them shoplifting in Lidl, bold as brass – they just help themselves,’ says one local resident in her 60s, chatting in the rain outside the Co-op. And collapsed in doorways, or arguing and shouting.

‘My daughter says it’s crack. She’s seen a few of her friends get on to it and they never get off it again. It’s a one-way street.’

Steve, the mechanic, tells me that when his brother takes his children to school, they see people still passed out from the night before on park benches. ‘We can’t work out what’s happened to our town. None of us can. This place used to be paradise!’

For over a century, this beautiful hilly town with a population of 11,500, tucked away on the craggy north coast of Devon near Croyde and Woolacombe, has attracted holidaymakers in their droves.

To stay in the hotels and B&Bs or go crabbing off the pier. To eat fresh fish, potter in the independent shops, lounge on the beach, pop in and out of the museum, theatre and aquarium, admire the art scene and, latterly, to gawp at Damien Hirst’s Verity – a 66ft, 25-ton bronze statue of a bisected pregnant woman holding a sword, which has rather divided opinion.

Locals proudly tell me that just a few years back the town was an exciting gastronomic centre.

‘We had some great restaurants – one with a Michelin star, another Michelin recommended and one with a “bib gourmand”. Some cities don’t have that,’ says Abigail.

But over recent years, as with many coastal towns, fortunes here have waned. As tastes changed, coach trips slowed and finally came to a juddering halt.

Covid had a devastating effect on businesses, which never quite recovered. Hotels were converted into cheap flats, often with multiple occupancy. The property market imploded and unemployment is high.

So today, while the area around the harbour is still bright and bustling, and the municipal gardens and flower displays are immaculately maintained by an army of volunteers, further into town an alarming number of shops have closed down. ‘Quite a lot don’t even bother to open on Saturdays any more,’ says one shopper.

Restaurants have moved on. Several letters from the Grand Harbour Hotel’s royal blue sign are missing. The bakery, greengrocers, night club and cottage hospital have all closed.

Meanwhile, drugs – courtesy of county-lines gangs flooding coastal towns with cocaine, crack and heroin – are everywhere and the knock-on effects are all too evident.

‘We’ve always had a bit of blow [cocaine]. But recently you’ve been able to get crack, and that needs stamping on fast,’ says town councillor Paul Crabb.

‘Ilfracombe’s no worse than other coastal towns, we’re just in the Press because we’re trying to do something about it.’

They need to.

According to Devon and Cornwall Police statistics, there were 364 violence and sexual offences, 287 anti-social-behaviour incidents and 121 shoplifting case in central and east Ilfracombe between April 2025 and March 2026 – and these were just the ones reported.

On top of all that, almost four in ten children here live in poverty, healthy life expectancy is just 59 years – 14 years less than some surrounding more affluent areas – in 2024 Public Health Devon reported that 30 per cent of people in the town centre faced income hardship, and affordable and social housing is scarce. While Mr Crabb is right that many coastal towns – such as Margate, Blackpool and Hastings – face similar problems of isolation, deprivation and long-term social challenges, it seems Ilfracombe has been battered by the perfect storm.

Funding, locals say, is laughable.

‘We don’t get anything here. We’re constantly overlooked – it all goes to Barnstaple down the road – everything from CCTV to policing, to Christmas lights and new flowers. We have to fight for everything,’ says Abigail. Part of the recent crime wave has been caused by feral teenagers expelled from the local academy and who, in one resident’s words, ‘think they’re gangsters’, although no one has seen them for a week or so.

‘We’re praying they’ve been moved on,’ she says.

But many of the worst drug-takers and troublemakers have been relocated here from other towns – Bideford, Barnstaple, Bristol and Torquay.

Dumped here because their councils can’t handle them. Often, initially, in places like Hilldales, a residential care facility for adults with alcohol and drug problems perched on the hill.

Then, after their statutory 28 days, they end up in multiple-occupancy flats in town with music blaring all night and slumped on the cinema steps in the morning.

‘We’ve become a magnet for drugs. Now there’s a whole community here getting high, crime has gone through the roof and the police do nothing,’ says Shelley, who works in the Ilfracombe Local Convenience Shop.

And the police? Since the council’s plea, the commissioner promised more help.

‘They just drive past. They don’t want to deal with it – they don’t have the funding,’ she says.

I spent several days in Ilfracombe this week and saw neither police officers nor street marshals on patrol.

‘If you go up to Tesco you’ll see them up there tucking into their meal deals, but if you call them for anything you’ll be lucky to see anyone within an hour and half,’ says Robert Bennellick, 59, who runs the George & Dragon with his wife, Rosie. ‘So we don’t bother calling anyone – we sort out our own security.’

At the Co-op, the approach appears to be to just stand back and let the criminals help themselves – although none of the staff is allowed to talk to me to confirm this.

Near an off-licence, Stuart, having a cigarette in the doorway, tells me they’ve installed 16 security cameras, mirrors and light-movement sensors – in a teeny seven-by-four shop. ‘And we need them all!’

Meanwhile, Shelley has a rather different approach. ‘I sort them out myself. I kick them in the knees – so they don’t dare nick anything when I’m here.’

Long-suffering residents also routinely clean up broken glass, smashed windows, uprooted plants and vandalised bus shelters and up-ended bins.

Some, like Steve, have very firm views: ‘It’s not poverty, it’s parenting – out drinking and smoking every night. There are plenty of jobs here if you’re not fussy.’

But most just want to turn things around.

‘It’s too easy to knock it all. It’s our town. You have to get involved, fight back. Reclaim our lovely home,’ says Shelley.

So a few years back the town council set up a not-for-profit company called One Ilfracombe, specifically designed to improve the lives of people living in the town – joining up local services, making people feel heard and led by a wonderful woman called Charmain Lovett, who battles constantly for money, grants, help, anything and is referred to by everyone I meet as ‘the beating heart of the town’.

When we meet, Charmain tells me about the other side of the town – the myriad clubs, societies, activities, new youth initiatives and endless support for locals in the town – and how, while they might be a bit battered and bruised at the moment, there’s no community quite like this.

Because when there’s trouble – and there’s a lot of it at the moment – the people of Ilfracombe lean in.

So when Vera Street’s mobility scooter was smashed to bits by the ‘gangster’ teenagers, Nick, the landlord at the Ship And Pilot, organised a whip-round and they raised £1,000 in a day for a second-hand replacement that arrived on Wednesday.

And when, last November, within hours of the big Christmas lights turn-on, a huge section of Christmas decorations were ripped down and the tree outside the George & Dragon was stolen, it was replaced by the community within the day.

The same George & Dragon that hosts a weekly pub quiz and gives all the proceeds – usually about £300 – to local charities. That’s about £15,000 a year.

But even all that extraordinary community spirit can’t stop the drug-fuelled crime wave from taking its toll.

Angela has given up on her bridal shop. ‘It was my dream project, but I closed the day after the break-in. I was only open a few months. I was devastated, and it had a terrible impact on me. I’m too afraid to go out on my own now.’

Many of the older residents wouldn’t dream of going out after dark. ‘My dad’s 85 and he’s not been out of his home for years now. He’s too scared,’ says Steve.

And quite a few younger ones, too.

One mum in the Liberal Club tells me how she and her siblings would roam freely as kids, but she would never dream of letting her 13-year-old son out on his own today.

‘We don’t feel safe, we really don’t, and a lot of women I know don’t go out after dark,’ says even Shelley, the vigilante kneecapper.

‘Just five years ago we’d all leave our doors open. Now I live on the fourth floor and I’m always checking the windows are locked.’

But for all that, I don’t meet a single person who would ever dream of leaving.

‘It’s the best town ever and we want it back,’ says Johnny Christophides.

So what’s the solution?

Several people tell me how, about 50 years ago when the town had a problem with troublemaking incomers, locals bundled them all on to buses, drove them to the top of the hill where the industrial estate is now, turfed them out and blocked the road so they couldn’t come back.

‘Sadly, we’re not allowed to do that any more,’ says a long-term resident. ‘So we’ll just stick it out.

‘But we’ll never give up. And we’ll never ever leave. We’ll just pray that they do, eventually. Or that the police finally kick in.’