About neighbourhood wardens, from the November print magazine.
Neighbourhood wardens patrol and tackle crime, anti-social behaviour, graffiti, and litter; and encourage community engagement and cohesion. They are popular. Great, you may say, but what’s in it for me. Directly or indirectly, quite a lot, maybe, judging by recent awards.
Winner in the community safety category – one of ten in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister awards – was Sonny Sandhu, of City Centre Street Wardens, Birmingham. Judges heard that he has been a key individual in the Circle of Deterrent scheme, which brought together more than 1,500 private and public CCTV systems to cover the city centre and its approach roads. He helped map cameras belonging to more than 160 organisations, and walked more than 250 miles around the city, the equivalent distance of London to Paris.
Community Street Wardens, Colchester, won in the ‘working with the elderly’ (including making security visits to elderly people’s homes while they are away) and ‘environmental (liveability) award. Judges heard how the team has drawn up agreements with businesses which have helped make public areas cleaner and safer by removing graffiti, fly-tipping, abandoned supermarket trolleys and cars and so on. The Essex town’s street wardens have recently been accredited by Essex Police. Colchester Borough Homes, the council’s arms length management organisation, sponsored two new wardens for the next two years. Team of the year was Seedley and Langworth Community Wardens, Salford. Similarly, the Manchester team has dealt with fly-tipping and anti-social behaviour, and has reported defective street lighting. They ensure unoccupied properties are secure in order to prevent arson. Hence a drop from 1,300 to 173 of occurrences of unauthorised entrances into void properties in the Salford area over a year.
Where’s the catch? The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister set up the Neighbourhood and Street Wardens’ Programme in 2000. An original 245 neighbourhood warden schemes part-funded by the ODPM has become about 500 schemes across England, employing some 3,000 wardens. The Welsh ones have gone under the umbrella of the Welsh Assembly. A council, housing association or similar body employ the wardens. As ODPM funding has run out, schemes have had to go cap in hand to local authorities, leading to some uncertainty. Confusingly, the Home Office has run its own similar scheme of civilian patrollers, under the control of police forces – community support officers.
In Swindon, a pilot street warden scheme was set up in May 2002 with central government funding, but the Government ended their funding for Swindon’s wardens in March 2005. The borough reviewed the scheme. Hence a 12-week trial this autumn of wardens for West Swindon and the Railway Village.
In Coventry, a ‘Corporate Warden Service’ was created by merging individual schemes running around the city as central Government funding ended. Since September the city has 75 wardens – 47 in the Corporate Service and a further 28 funded by external sources. Confusingly, the city council funds 12 Police Community Support Officers tasked to patrol anti-social behaviour hotspots.
Hence there is something of a proliferation of varied uniformed civilian street patrollers. For instance, in Bedford, a successful vote for a Business Improvement District (BID) means that a complusory tax on businesses in part pays for one of two extra police community support officers dedicated to the town centre. The BID has also opted for ‘Bluecaps’ – meeters and greeters. A Bedford Borough Council street ranger (their kind of neighbourhood warden) won in the ‘community engagement’ category.
