A LOCAL politician has urged that the "threatening atmosphere and the intimidation of staff and customers" outside Barrhead's Asda "must stop".

It comes after Paul O'Kane MSP spoke to the town's Asda store manager Amanda Green and Asda's senior corporate affairs manager, Polly Jones, following concerns of anti-social behaviour outside the Main Street shop.

During their discussion, the group spoke about the escalation of the anti-social behaviour occurring outside the front of the store and a potential plan of action to address the issue.

Paul O'Kane MSP said: “I walked into the meeting with the Barrhead Asda team believing I knew the scale of the problem, but it would seem even worse and that it is occurring regularly.

“Groups of young people varying in size from fifteen to thirty, are creating a very hostile environment in which customers and staff do not feel safe.

“I want to work for a full community approach, whereby our local authority, local police, community police and Asda engage with each other to get a sense of what the true impact of this behaviour is and how best we can collectively tackle it.

“The management team of Asda Barrhead is committed to making the shop as safe as possible, they are going above and beyond to make sure their colleagues and customers are kept out of harm’s way.

“We need to keep in mind that a lot of anti-social behaviour will be coming from young people who will have had quite a dysfunctional couple of years during the pandemic but let’s be clear it is never acceptable to steal, or intimidate or threaten people with violence.

“We need a solution to this problem and I’m going to seek in the New Year for all of the relevant bodies in East Renfrewshire to come together to address it.

"The threatening atmosphere and the intimidation of staff and customers must stop.”

Asda Barrhead store manager Amanda Green added: “We were grateful Paul came to the store to hear first-hand the impact that antisocial behaviour is having on our local community. 

"Barrhead businesses and residents shouldn’t have to put up with this.  

"At Asda, we’re doing everything we can to help keep our customers and colleagues safe, and we look forward to working with Paul and other local partners to try to tackle the problem as a community.”