BOROUGH OF POOLE
COMMUNITY SUPPORT OVERVIEW GROUP
25th November 2003
Motion from Council concerning Neighbourhood wardens
PART OF PUBLISHED FORWARD PLAN: No
1. PURPOSE AND POLICY CONTEXT
1.1 The purpose of this report is to respond to the motion received by full Council concerning the establishment of Neighbourhood wardens.
2. RECOMMENDATIONS
2.1.Members are asked to note and support the proposed actions that are taking place to address the motion.
3. BACKGROUND INFORMATION
3.1.The following motion was presented to Council on the 16th September,
“This Council made an application to Government last year for "Neighbourhood Wardens" for Alderney, Newtown, Bourne Valley, and Poole Town Centre. The application apparently failed because of the inclusion in the scheme of Poole Town Centre, a commercial area, following representations.
Upon making enquiries, with the help of one of our MPs, it would seem that a more effective scheme is "Community Support Officers" which is led by the Police.
We applaud the initiative of the Head of Housing and Community Services in making a fresh application around the Community Support model and ask that this Council get fully behind any scheme. We ask that the Council ensure that the detail of the application takes full account of the area of influence of the anti-social behaviour, rather than based around strict ward boundaries.
The newspaper report (that we read during the preparation of this Motion) speaks of the application covering Alderney and Turlin Moor. The problems that are sometimes, but not always, generated from within Alderney have a core area of effect from Wallisdown through to Ashley Road, and from Talbot Heath through to Mannings Heath.
We therefore ask that priority be given to a scheme that includes (if Ward boundaries are necessary) Alderney, Newtown, and Branksome West. These are areas that have no other additional security for residents.”
Councillors Trent, Eades, Clements, Plummer, Dugdale and Meachin
3.2.At the same meeting of Council the Leader of the Council stated the priorities for the administration, which included “making Poole a cleaner, greener and safer place”. Street wardens were identified as one way of achieving this.
3.3.Management team is developing a response to this priority, which may be presented to cabinet examining a wider set of options.
3.4.The bid referred to in the motion is the application of the Local public service agreement to reduce criminal damage over the next three years. The target is to reduce criminal damage in Poole over the next 3 years by a further 15%. IN the last financial year 2,936 incidents of criminal damage were recorded by the Police and Police plan the target for 2007 is to reduce that to 2530 and the LPSA target is to reduce still further to 2173.
3.5.The partners to the target (the Council and the Police) will receive £ 90,000 of pump priming grant over the three-year period to help achieve the target. If the partners are successful in achieving the target they will receive £ 250,000 in a reward grant.
3.6.The motion also refers to Community support officers. These posts are quite different from neighbourhood wardens. The Police reform Act has given chief constables the power to accredit officers either Police or employed by the Council or other agencies to deal with anti-social behaviour. This includes the power to make on the spot fines.
- What is currently proposed?
4.1.The LPSA target for reducing criminal damage has been agreed. The action plan for achieving the target includes the recruitment of 2 neighbourhood wardens. The intention is that these wardens would patrol the geographical areas where criminal damage is highest, particularly damage to Council buildings. If they are successful in reducing criminal damage to public buildings they will reduce the Council and other agencies expenditure in addressing criminal damage and those savings can be part used to fund the posts. The intention is also to charge landlords in Poole for the wardens to undertake patrols in areas where anti-social behaviour takes place. This would include Registered social landlords and the Council as a landlord.
4.2.The geographical focus of the wardens would be where the most criminal damage has taken place to public buildings.
4.3.The continuation of the warden posts after the three years of pump priming grant runs out will be dependent upon whether they have been successful in reducing criminal damage and generating savings.
4.4.The work being undertaken by management team includes an analysis of the existing Council staff that undertakes work on the streets in Poole, which could be better coordinated into a warden type role.
Background papers
Council Motion
LPSA papers Simon Hendey ext 633747
Simon Hendey Head of Housing and Community services