Villagers are asking for an increased police presence after enduring repeated incidents of anti-social behaviour by youths.

Horrabridge Parish Council was told about groups of teenagers throwing apples at passing cars on the A386 in the dark, placing bins on the road bridge over the river, putting traffic bollards in the middle of roads and intruding into the allotments.

Last week’s meeting agreed to request the local community support officer (PCSO) officer to visit the village occasionally to act as a deterrent.

Councillors also considered installing CCTV surveillance as a general crime fighting tool, but decided against the idea, despite the incidents.

Cllr Mike Huda, council chair, who stores bollards for parish council use, has made them more secure after older children were blamed for taking them from his yard to use maliciously.

He spoke against adopting CCTV: ‘It’s far from simple to host and operate CCTV effectively because you have to jump through so many hoops and legalities to ensure you can identify individuals safely. There has to be a very high level of certainty about identifying someone and that’s not always possible due to the quality of images.

‘You also have train up a person in data collection and use.

‘Things aren’t that bad in Horrabridge, we get away lightly compared with many places. We’re very lucky that the level of incidents is quite low level. Many acts of vandalism can be rectified without the need to identify anyone and they don’t happen very often.’

Cllr Christine Edmondson said there had been recent reports from drivers who had been bombarded with apples fallen from trees which had scared some of them. Several had used their in-car recording to report attacks to police.

All incidents should be reported to police to build long-term intelligence and help the PCSO.