West Berkshire Wardens scheme ends today after budget cuts

Town and parish council's seeking alternatives

A VITAL service for West Berkshire communities will come to an end today, while plans to replace it have fallen through.

The neighbourhood wardens patrolled communities in Newbury, Thatcham, Greenham, Speen and Cold Ash, dealing with anti-social behaviour, graffiti, fly tipping and vandalism.

They also maintained links with vulnerable residents and supervised young offenders on community service.

However, budget cuts will see the work carried out by the 14 wardens come to an end today (Thursday).

West Berkshire Council and Sovereign housing association announced that they would pull their combined £298,000 for the service earlier this year. The decision left town and parish councils, who also contributed to the scheme, to find a replacement service.

Looking to step into the vacuum was the Newbury Business Improvement District (BID), which was offering a replacement scheme to cover Newbury, Thatcham, Greenham and Cold Ash.

But a blow was struck when Thatcham Town Council, one of the larger financial contributors, decided against signing up and went instead with its own scheme.

The town council’s leader, Jason Collis (Con, Thatcham North), said that the BID scheme would not have met its needs. Deputy leader, Richard Crumly (Con, Thatcham Central), added that Thatcham was big enough to have its own service.

The managing director of Newbury BID, Russell Downing, conceded that his scheme was now dead in the water.

Mr Downing said: “To make the scheme viable we needed the funding from all parishes involved, which is a real shame. It’s down to individual councils to do something if they wish.”

He said the decision would not affect the BID nor its street rangers scheme.

The leader of Newbury Town Council, Dave Goff (Con, Clay Hill), said that people would feel the impact of losing the wardens.

Newbury had budgeted £59,000 towards the scheme and Mr Goff said the town council was looking to take on some of the wardens’ work in order to bridge the gap until its next budget.

He added that the town council had considered the BID scheme but would have most likely followed Thatcham’s lead and provided its own.

“It’s fallen through now as it wasn’t financially viable for them [the BID] to take on,” he said.

“With Thatcham pulling out they would have been the other significant funder. We probably would have come to a similar conclusion.”

Speen and Greenham parish councils, with budgets far smaller than the town councils, are now looking to fill the void.

Greenham chairman Phil Barnett said that the parish was exploring its options as to what services it urgently needed with the small amount of funding it had available.

The vice-chairman of Speen Parish Council, Trevor Mathers, said: “The Newbury wardens did a fantastic job in Speen, and unless we can put something in place very soon, Speen will become less clean.”

The parish council is looking for a contractor to take over the wardens’ work and people offering a quote should contact: clerk@speenpc.org.uk