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.
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The Labour councillor added: “It is not ideal, it is not perfect, but it is a pragmatic solution to a situation. We had to do something different because we were just not going to get those wardens.”
Kenton ward councillor Stephen Lambert had asked what had happened to the wardens proposal after concerns had been raised last November. At a meeting of the council’s overview and scrutiny committee last Thursday, Coun Lambert said that residents in disadvantaged areas wanted to see active police presence on their streets.
His comments came in the week that it was confirmed that Northumbria Police plans to axe the majority of its Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) jobs. A total of 136 PCSO posts are set to go, 41 of which are currently vacant, though the force has pledged to redeploy at-risk staff to other jobs.
At the same time, bosses say they will be putting an extra 134 police officers on the street. Superintendent Jamie Pitt told the scrutiny committee that the restructure, which comes amid a £12m budget deficit, would mean a “change is focused on neighbourhood crime and anti-social behaviour and a proactive targeting of offenders”.
The council warden jobs had been advertised last summer, before the council tried to attract more applicants with an improved £22,777 salary. The scheme had been announced as part of the local authority’s Better Lives, Safer Communities programme, which also included plans for a Neighbourhood and City Centre Task Force operating on Friday and Saturday evenings.
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