Kirklees Youth Council activity leads to withdrawal of Mosquito sonic device

The council has used 11 of the devices, which emit an irritating high frequency and can only be detected by the hearing of young people. They are used to counter antisocial behaviour by discouraging young people from gathering in certain trouble spots.

However, following a council cabinet meeting yesterday (31 August), it was persuaded by members of the Kirklees Youth Council that the device was discriminatory and that there were alternatives to its use.

Julie Walker, operations and development manager for young people’s services, said the decision was the culmination of more than a year of activity by the youth group, including collecting 1,000 signatures for an anti-Mosquito petition and working on the UK Youth Parliament’s "Bite Back" drive to ban the device.

"An application for the use of a Mosquito on a local council-run shopping centre really was the catalyst for their activity," she said.

There have been calls for a European ban on the use of the device, most recently by the Council of Europe, which called its use a violation of human rights and said it inflicted "acoustic pain" on young people.

The UK tops the list of European Mosquito users, accounting for around 3,500 of the total of 5,000 sales since it became available in January 2006.