A revamped Reading warden service will benefit residents by offering a quicker and more efficient council response to common complaints like fly-tipping, graffiti and litter.
The launch of the Reading Council’s new Environmental Wardens service follows a detailed review of the roles of the Council’s three existing on-street services – Neighbourhood Officers, Neighbourhood Wardens and Environmental Liaison Officers – and most of these roles now been merged into a new Streetcare Environment team.
A survey of Reading residents last year also identified the need for changes in the services offered.
The Reading survey, which attracted over 1,000 responses, showed that environmental crime was the top priority issue for tenants and residents in Reading. This reflects findings from the 2008 Residents’ Survey where clean streets and lower crime levels were described as the key factors to improve for Reading to be described as a ‘good place to live’.
Over the past 18 months, a project team has been looking at the roles of Reading Neighbourhood Officers, the Warden Service and Environmental Liaison Officers, all of whom regularly patrol the borough’s streets. The aim of the review was to identify how their duties could be better organised to deal with the environmental issues Reading residents say are important to them.
All three roles involved estate inspections in the form of ‘neighbourhood walkabouts’ and regular liaison with the public through Safer Reading and Neighbourhood Action Group (NAG) meetings.
Reading Borough Council’s Cabinet agreed in July to merge existing Environmental Liaison Officers and Warden Teams into one service with a specific focus on tackling environmental antisocial behaviour.
A team of officers has now been pulled together with enforcement powers to enable them to issue fixed penalty notices where necessary. Within the team of 12, six will focus on environmental liaison and four will undertake crime prevention work around environmental antisocial behaviour, and the remaining two officers will continue to concentrate on waste issues, advising the public how to increase recycling and reduce waste overall.
The Council’s review identified weaknesses in the previous setup and the new warden scheme will address this by being flexible and with a clear remit that ‘nobody walks past a problem’. Teams will work on a ‘patch’ basis, enabling them to get to know the specific environmental issues each neighbourhood faces and target resources where necessary.
The new Reading Environmental Wardens service will be based in the Council’s Directorate of Environment, Culture and Sport but it will work closely with colleagues from other Council services.
Daisy Benson, Lead Councillor for Housing, said: "Tackling antisocial behaviour remains a top priority for the Council and we have reviewed and refocused resources and staff teams to ensure ‘no one walks past a problem’.
"Our housing nuisance team has recently been co-located in the Police station to improve our response to anti-social behaviour.
"This new team will be proactively focusing on what many residents have told us is important to them: keeping neighbourhoods clean and green and taking tough action against those who damage the local environment."
Ricky Duveen, Lead Councillor for Reading Environment and Sustainability, said: "A lot of the work previously done by the three teams looking after local neighbourhoods overlapped. By bringing them all into one team we can be more efficient in using scarce resources and more effective in tackling the issues that affect local residents."
Jeanette Skeats, Lead Councillor for Reading Communities, Voluntary Sector and Performance, said: "We have listened to what residents told us, which is that preventing environmental crime is their top priority, and we have refocused the work of our wardens accordingly. I believe this is a real step forward, which will benefit the local community."
Reading Borough Council
