One 80-year-old woman, who asked to remain anonymous, described how youths are gradually dismantling a garage behind her home and hurling the bricks and sections of dangerous asbestos roofing into her back garden.
She has found more than 30 bricks in her garden in recent weeks.

She said: "It's hell living here. The noise they make is terrible. They are screaming and screeching and swearing into the early hours. It's worst on Saturday nights. The latest lot of bricks were thrown into my garden at 1.45am on Sunday.
"I was woken by the noise of them crashing down. I like gardening, but have had to give it up because I don't feel safe in my garden anymore."

Her daughters agree to be named, but only because they don't live in the immediate area.
Pat Neal, 56, who lives in Hindley Green, has had to take her elderly mother to Wigan Infirmary's accident and emergency department on numerous occasions when she has suffered panic attacks and breathing problems after being terrorised by youths. On one occasion an ambulance had to be called to her home.

She said: "We have just found another two used tampons with fresh blood on them in my mum's garden. It's disgusting.
"My mother has had so many bricks thrown into her garden she is too scared to even put her washing out anymore.
"Her windows have been smashed twice. My mum can't let her great grandchildren play in the garden when they stay because of it's not safe.
"All the pensioners who live here are frightened to use their gardens. The police keep moving these youths on, but they just come back.

"It's terrible that elderly people are having to put up with this. People have had enough. Something has to be done about this."
Her sister, Marlene Barnes, added: "People living here have made their gardens beautiful, but can't even sit out in them. This has been going on too long and people are sick and tried of it.
"The garage where these gangs are congregating has been open for months. Why hasn't it been sealed up? The parents of the kids who cause the trouble should be fined and then they'd soon stop their kids doing this.

"The garages need demolishing. Something needs to be done to protect the residents of these bungalows even if it means putting up a high fence with spikes on top to stop them climbing over and throwing things into people's gardens."
The sisters and their mother say they have contacted Wigan Council and MP Andy Burnham on numerous occasions asking for help, but feel their complaints and requests for help have fallen on deaf ears.

Another elderly resident of Ashbourne Avenue in his 70s said: "The language these youths use is atrocious. I've had scaffolding couplings and enough bricks and stones to fill a bucket thrown into my garden.
"My wife's not been in our garden for two years because she is too frightened. But everyone's too afraid to confront the gangs.
Another resident, in her 60s, described how tensions are growing on the Borsdane estate over the lack of progress on the long awaited re-development for the precinct.

It's now almost a year since MP Andy Burnham, whose consistency includes Hindley, announced the Metro had signed a "facilitating agreement" with the precinct's landlords James Hall and Co which would speed up the development.
In the mean time residents have to put up with gangs running riot in and precinct at night.

The resident said: "When you're constantly waking up in the morning and having to pick up used tampons and empty bottles of Lambrini from your garden it wears you down.
"Residents are frustrated and angry. Someone could be badly injured or even killed by these bricks they are throwing into people's gardens. It's going to get even worse when the light nights come.
"The police are doing their best, but their hands are tied. They can only move them on, but they just come back. If you try to speak to these teenagers all you get is a load of verbal abuse.

"Today the young have no respect. If nothing is done then vigilantes are going to start going out and dealing with these gangs their way. It will come to that. Why do we have to put up with this?
"The council or someone needs to do something about it. How long do they think people are going to just sit here and take this?"
It is believed the current impasse surrounds on-going negotiations with tenants.

Following last March's agreement the developer put a sum of money into a central pot, held by the council, to allow negotiations to take place with shopkeepers leasing units on the precinct.
A district valuer is speaking to current tenants to agree deals to either buy them out or secure them new premises in the new development.