When you see kids setting fire to cars and trash piled high in the streets, who ya gonna call? Community wardens, that's who. Three wardens told Mark Beveridge and Mahua Chatterjee how they go about keeping the peace.
here's a new kind of justice on the streets these days: community wardens. There are 210 warden schemes across the UK. In town centres they're called street wardens or rangers, while in deprived urban areas they're called neighbourhood wardens, but their mission is the same: to tackle antisocial behaviour and environmental issues.

The first neighbourhood wardens were introduced in September 2000, the first street wardens a year ago. There are now 85 neighbourhood warden schemes and 125 street warden schemes, backed by a total of more than £68.5m from the Home Office.

We talked to three wardens about their growing role in the community.

Matt Fowler
Fowler, 26, has been a street ranger in Holborn, central London, since June this year. He earns £11 an hour and is employed by local business group Holborn Business Partnership.

I'd worked in the security industry for six years and thought that being a ranger would be an interesting move. I was drawn to the idea of helping people as well as the variety.

I like the fact that I get on-the-job training and I like working in partnership with the police and councils.

I tend to work 11am to 7pm. My patch includes Holborn station, the second busiest underground station in London. There are loads of businesses in the area, plus student accommodation and colleges so it's very, very busy – there isn't a time of day or night when it's quiet.

The best thing about the job is that no two days are ever the same and it's great because you're not stuck in the office.

I love the diversity of my work and it's definitely not mundane.

It can be hard when some of the people – the tourists I come into contact with – can't speak English and trying to help them can be difficult. But there are a lot of local shops where staff speak a variety of languages, so there's normally someone who can help out.

The strangest thing I've come across so far was helping someone out who'd travelled the wrong way on the Piccadilly underground line, got out at Holborn and was completely lost. He was trying to get to a job interview in Heathrow but in fact was right at the opposite end of the line.

I've never been in any awkward or frightening situations. So far nothing's ever got out of hand.

Initially I got the impression that the public were quite pessimistic about what I could do to help, but now they've grown accustomed to me. Now, I'm often their first point of contact and if anything happens in the area they'll often talk to us ahead of the police.

They’ll often talk to us before the police 

London warden

I see my job as an ambassadorial role to people in Holborn. We're trying to make it a nicer place to work in, live in and visit.

Karen Stoker-Buckell
Stoker-Buckell is 43 and has worked as a senior neighbourhood warden with Portsmouth council for a year. She earns £20,000.

I've done all sorts of different jobs. I worked in the first aid department of a factory; I was a nurse in a hospital and a matron at a girls' boarding school in Somerset. I used to be a residential childcare officer – which is just a fancy name for a working in a children's home – and I also had a spell as a trainee driving instructor. So when I saw the warden job advertised, it seemed like an accumulation of all the jobs I'd done before.

I also felt very connected to the area as I've worked around here in the past. I saw it as a good opportunity to help a community where I already knew many of the residents.

Two of the areas I cover, Paulsgrove and Wymering, are among the city's poorer districts. The majority of stock is council housing, but there are also housing association properties and private homes.

I'm the only female warden in the unit and I'm the boss. I do have some administrative duties, but I try to spend about 30 hours a week patrolling. I never wanted an office job.

The most enjoyable part of my job is seeing what we've done for the area. We've helped to prevent fly-tipping and to get abandoned vehicles removed from the streets. The estates' environment has improved a lot since the scheme started – it's a lot tidier than it was. When we started, arson to vehicles was a big problem and the area had a real problem with joyriding. Last week, though, we got a report that vehicle arson had been reduced by 50% since we started working here last year.

The fear of crime has also been reduced. I've spoken to residents' groups and they feel that the fear of crime isn't as high as it was.

Our involvement with local children has been great. We've helped set up a 'walking bus' scheme – wardens follow a designated route, collect children from various stop-off points and accompany them to school. It's helped to prevent accidents and cut down car congestion in the mornings. The kids get to school on time and it helps to improve their social skills. The response has been excellent; the younger kids are growing up accepting wardens as a normal part of the community.

I do find it hard dealing with antisocial behaviour. We've had to put up with verbal abuse at times, people saying things like we're interfering. Initially I think people saw us as police informants, grasses. We do work closely with the police – we're like an extra pair of eyes and ears they didn't have before.

Sometimes it can be uncomfortable to listen to what people call other people. But we always patrol with a partner, which makes you feel safer.

Residents at community meetings welcome us with open arms. Others – the kind of people who don't have much interest in the community – barely seem to notice us.

People see us as being able to solve problems

Darlington warden

The funniest thing that's happened was when some kids ran riot with paint that had been left lying around on one of the estates. There was orange emulsion everywhere. All we had to do was follow the footprints and handprints to find the kids. They had not only covered the walls with paint – they'd covered each other as well. It was all over their faces – even their eyelashes were stiff with paint.

Greg Reilly
Reilly, 22, was Darlington's first warden when he started work in May 2000. He is now a senior neighbourhood warden earning approximately £20,000 a year.

I was always interested in working with the police force and when I was 19 I joined as a special constable – a volunteer policeman – to gain a bit of experience. I'd always wanted to do crime-related work and be involved with the community.

We patrol the whole of Darlington, but we do have nine priority areas that we patrol regularly. Within those priority areas there are two large council estates.

Getting involved with the community is the best part of my job. Everything we do is in the public eye and it's good to see when we help to improve the quality of life for a resident.

It's also been good to see how the service has developed since I started. We now have 10 full-time staff working with the scheme, and we are hoping to expand in the future.

The main idea was to reduce the fear of crime and foster an atmosphere of security. We work with the police in tackling serious offences, such as burglary, but we also do work on littering, abandoned cars and taxi licensing. A lot of our time is spent dealing with antisocial behaviour, though. Our staple role relates to youngsters causing annoyance.

The speed at which things happen can be frustrating – it can take longer to solve a problem than we'd like. Often we have to wait for other departments or agencies to react, and in the meantime the public think that nothing is being done.

One example was with a problem family who had been reported for antisocial behaviour and various criminal offences. Police and housing officers were all involved at some level, but they were all acting separately. Eventually we helped to pull everyone together and work to a single action plan. Even so, the situation took months to resolve.

It's funny, but some people seem to think that we are here to stop even small disturbances. Recently we had a call from a woman complaining about children playing in a field beside her house – she wanted us to move them.

On one occasion I arranged a meeting with the members of a notoriously disruptive family. I was supposed to be accompanied by a police officer and a housing officer, but neither turned up. I went ahead with the meeting, and got a better response from the family than I would have if the other two had been there.

People see wardens as enforcers, as people who can act to solve problems. On the whole the response has been really positive: last year wardens were given an 84% approval rating in a survey of local residents, the highest of any council employees. The road maintenance team came second with 25%.

Source

Housing Today