Nick Timothy, the MP for West Suffolk, has called for a crackdown on crime and anti-social behaviour after hearing from business owners that it is severely affecting Newmarket’s commercial environment.
Mr Timothy made the comments after a number of local firms attended the latest of his regular business fora. This was the second such meeting — with the first one in March in Haverhill — and was held in Newmarket on 27 June 2025.
Mr Timothy heard from one business owner that crime and anti-social behaviour are significant factors affecting the local commercial environment.
“Unless you deal with problems with zero tolerance you will lose control”, the business owner said.
Another attendee said: “No one seems willing to enforce the policies on money laundering. Every town across the country is in same space. Graffiti gets reported and then removed but certain parts of the town are becoming no-go areas after dark.”
Commenting after the meeting, Mr Timothy said: “When you have spaces in a town where it is ambiguous whether it is public or private space, it invites criminality. I know Suffolk Constabulary are working extremely hard for the community.
“But they are being forced to divert so many resources towards paperwork and bureaucracy, and now have to spend inordinate hours going through massive amounts of digital evidence.
“Officers should be given the support and space to focus on bread and butter policing — walking the beat, investigating crimes and bringing offenders to justice swiftly — so that communities feel safer.”
Mr Timothy said at the business forum:“It is not about cuts because we have more Police than ever before. It’s about the fact that officer time on the front line is really diminished. The Police are not being allowed to deal effectively with organised crime. On top of this, the Police funding formula means that budgets available to regional police forces are really tight.”
Mr TImothy added that the need to revive High Streets was a pervasive concern across West Suffolk and the country, and will mean the need to reimagine town centres.
“We need to revive our high streets,” he said. “Some of this is about obvious issues like rates and rents and parking. But some of it requires bigger picture thinking and completely reimagining the way our high streets work.”
At the meeting the Suffolk Chamber of Commerce pointed to the bleak outlook emerging from its survey of local businesses during quarter two of 2025, showing that virtually all business measures are in negative territory — whether it is sales, orders, cashflow, turnover or profitability.
A representative of the Chamber told the forum: “There are more businesses reporting declines than increases. Overwhelmingly the main concerns for the participants in the survey are corporate taxation and four in five businesses name it as their key headwind in terms of growth and employment. Interestingly we are seeing inflation concerns upticking again and beginning to see the impact of labour inflation, which is being driven through national insurance rises.”
Other issues raised at the business forum included concerns among firms about the crushing amount of regulation such as new pay transparency rules. The business owner said; “All of these laws take way our ability to be entrepreneurial. It feels like the laws are brought in to try to fix things but they are actually making us less productive.”
Another CEO said the cost of complying with biodiversity net gain rules was ‘astronomical’.
Commenting after the meeting, Mr Timothy said: “I really welcomed the opportunity to discuss so many important issues with West Suffolk business leaders, and with regional business representatives.
“It’s clear that firms are facing an increasingly difficult environment — something that has been made worse deliberate decisions by the Government with their jobs tax and family farms tax.
“The root cause of these tax rises is reckless increases in government spending. And firms are struggling with red tape which is only getting worse. We need to back local business — not crush them like this.”
