A CRACKDOWN on the yob culture which blights Chesham and Amersham is being organised by Chiltern District Council.

Four areas - Chesham town centre, Waterside, Pond Park and Amersham on the Hill - have been pinpointed by the District Council as having problems.

These include intimidating behaviour from youths, drinking and noise nuisance.

But councillors have dismissed the claims anti-social behaviour needs to be targeted in the two towns.

Cllr Vera Head, who represents Amersham on the Hill, said: "I feel young people are being criminalised before they open their mouths. They are not doing any harm to anybody."

Councillors said they were working to change residents' perceptions of youths in a bid to tackle the problem of anti-social behaviour.

Amersham on the Hill is one of four areas identified by Chiltern District Council as having a specific problem with yobbish and intimidating behaviour from youths.

But Vera Head, Chiltern District councillor for Amersham on the Hill, said there was a danger of branding all young poeple as troublemakers.

She said: "I'm not frightened to walk up and down the road. There is a fear of crime and things are way overplayed because it's a national perception, and it doesn't relate locally.

"I don't think you can criminalise all young people because half a dozen misbehave themselves. Problems are spasmodic and I don't think it's out of control.

"I feel young people are being criminalised before they open their mouths.

"They are not doing any harm to anybody.

"Personal attacks are very rare in this area."

Martin King, the Mayor of Amersham, said there were some concerns about anti-social behaviour in the town, but agreed that incidents of violence were rare.

He said: "It's youths not having anything to do, or parents not controlling their kids.

"I wouldn't say they are violent but they do look threatening.

"They have the attitude of you can't touch us'." Chesham town centre, Waterside and Pond Park were also identified as hotspots - and Waterside did see problems in 2006.

Justine Fulford, Chiltern Councillor for St Mary's and Waterside, said: "In summer 2006 problems escalated to quite a severe scale.

"People were being disturbed up until five in the morning by groups of perhaps 60 youths gathering.

"There were pitched battles at one point and that was the final straw.

"We had a very quiet 2007 and everyone has been on the ball ever since. We don't want things to escalate. Things have improved but there are indications that without similar, focused attention and co-operation it will return to where it was."

She added the council needed to keep up its strong partnerships with police and Neighbourhood Action Groups.

Chiltern District Council defined anti-social behaviour as "selfish and unacceptable activity that can cause distress to the local community."

Council statistics showed the most common form of anti-social behaviour was noise nuisance.