Council bosses in Newcastle have been forced to drop plans to hire a team of new wardens to crack down on anti-social behaviour.
The city council had been trying to hire 15 neighbourhood wardens as part of a £1.5m strategy to try and improve community safety in trouble hotspots. But the idea has had to be scrapped after the local authority failed to recruit anyone for the posts.
Coun Lesley Storey, the council’s cabinet member responsible for community safety, told a scrutiny panel last week that the council had tried three rounds of recruitment that were unsuccessful and that the result was “not for want of trying”, having boosted the salary on offer and created a “more exciting” job description. After going “back to the drawing board”, Coun Storey said a new plan was to hire five community safety support officers instead.
