Dispersal orders have been renewed for the New Addington and town centre areas.

They begin this week and will last for six months.

The orders give police additional powers to deal with trouble makers, breaking up gatherings of two or more people and excluding them from the area for up to 24 hours.

The last dispersal order in New Addington was set up to deal with the antisocial behaviour by a small group, who were congregating in the shopping parade.

Ken Burgess, owner of Burgess Boys Pet Care Centre for over 31 years, said: "New Addington has a really close and active community.

"During the six months of the last order, we did see an improvement at the beginning but there is still a small group of people, who are behaving in an intimidating and harassing way.

"We would welcome another dispersal order, to help deal with this."

Dispersal orders have been successful in dealing with antisocial behaviour and there are ten zones operating in Croydon.

Previous dispersal orders in the town centre have contributed to a drop of 10 per cent of reported incidents since December 2009.

Superintendent Dave Stringer said: “We have had great success with dispersal orders in Croydon. It is crucial for us to continue to effectively and swiftly deal with the issues occurring in these two areas.”