Wardens;Edinburgh;London Citichat 17 May 2002

CITICHAT 19/2002 - 17th May 2002


Edinburgh and London

My good friend Alan Tallentire, the Chief Executive of the Association of Town Centre Management (ATCM) which operates out of London, invited me to chair the ATCM Scotland Conference “Investing in our Town and City Centres” which was held in the historic Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh on Wednesday this week. Then on Thursday to speak at a ‘Neighbourhood Renewal Unit’ Conference entitled “Wardens and Liveability – the International Experience.” So a busy week it has been with no chance to enjoy Britain’s really glorious spring weather

Both conferences focused largely on the establishment of Improvement Districts. England has evidently taken the decision to promulgate national enabling legislation and Scotland, now with its own Parliament, appears to be following close behind. Because of their historic approach to urban management, the likelihood is that their CIDs will be jointly financed by public and private sectors and probably managed by the local authority in partnership with business.

The London conference proved to be extremely interesting. Its background stems from the establishment of the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) by the Government in December 1997. The Unit is located in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and reports to Tony Blair through his Deputy. – thus emphasising the importance with which the initiative is viewed. ‘Social exclusion’is a British shorthand term for what can happen when people or an area suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown. In the past, UK governments have developed policies that have tried to deal with each of the problems of social exclusion individually, but there has been little success in tackling the complicated linkages between them, or preventing them from arising in the first place. The SEU seeks to do so by producing “joined-up solutions to joined-up problems”. Subsequently the ‘Neighbourhood Renewal Unit’ (NRU) was established as an outcome of “The National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal” In a foreword to the National Strategy, Tony Blair says “When we came into office, we inherited a country where hundreds of neighbourhoods were scarred by unemployment, educational failure and crime. They had become progressively more cut off from the prosperity and opportunities that most of us take for granted. Communities were breaking down. Public services were failing. People had started to lose hope. That is why I asked the Social Exclusion Unit to work on developing a new and integrated approach to reversing this decline……….My vision is of a nation where no-one is seriously disadvantaged by where they live, where power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of many not the few. This Action Plan is a crucial step in creating one nation, not separated by class, race or where people live.”

The NRU oversees the implementation of the National Strategy and is the umbrella body for a number of regeneration initiatives including one known as “the Neighbourhood and Street Warden’s Programme and it is this programme that invited a number of CID practitioners to provide input on our local experience plus a number of persons involved in various aspects of policing.

The welcome was provided by Barbara Roche, the Minister of State for Social Exclusion whilst the keynote was provided by another Cabinet Minister, Sally Keeble the Under Secretary of State for Regeneration – the two Cabinet Ministers again stressing the high priority the government is placing on this initiative. Apart from American, Australian and South African input, Professor George Kelling ( co-author of “Broken Windows”) gave an excellent overview of the failure and subsequent resurgence in American policing and the Deputy Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police Force, Ian Blair, spoke about the role of Wardens relative the Metropolitan Police.

So what’s it all about? Well, listening to the Minister for State, Social Exclusion, one would have thought from her description of local problems that one was in South Africa and certainly not in England. She described the Neighbourhood Renewal Programme as a ‘massive sustained initiative’ over the next 20 years in order to ‘narrow the gap between the most deprived neighbourhoods and the best’. She described areas where there was widespread unemployment, sub-standard education, poor housing and significant health problems. She confessed that the poorest communities receive the lowest services and that decent minimum standards, ‘floor targets’ have had to have been set for service delivery and these are being measured and monitored. She equated ‘floor targets’ with minimum wage levels – ‘the creation of a benchmark below which level service provision would be unacceptable’. The programme is designed to be driven by the communities themselves. Building on this introduction, Sally Keeble said that there would be 200 registered warden schemes in place by the end of this year employing 1100 wardens and costing central government forty three and-a-half million pounds a year. The programme would focus on ‘taking back public space’ so that communities can experience a sense of ownership of public spaces – ‘regeneration isn’t done to local people, it is done with local people; it will show that the public authorities do care and that they are prepared to tackle social and economic issues that create deprivation.

The Deputy Police Commissioner spelt out how crime is skyrocketing in London, 911 calls have increased from one to two-and-a-half million in the London area! There has been a ‘massive rise’ in street robbery and ‘car-jacking’. There are clear links he asserted between these crimes and gangs, drugs and murder. He and Kelling agreed and emphasised that there is a proven linkage between quality of life issues, disorder and serious crime. If you do not deal with the minor quality of life issues, the probability is that the perpetrator will end up carrying out violent crimes! “The jerk who mugs someone today will move into serious crime tomorrow”. The dichotomisation (his word not mine!) of police attention which concentrates the best police on serious crime and leaves minor misdemeanours to less experienced police is short sighted and entirely wrong.

So, what are wardens? There are evidently two types, Neighbourhood and Street. The former is a uniformed, semi-official presence in a residential area whose aim is to improve the quality of life; promote community safety, assist with environmental improvements and housing management and contribute to community development. They have the support of local residents and key agencies such as the police. Street Wardens on the other hand, are highly visible uniformed patrols in town and village centres, public areas and neighbourhoods who focus more on caring for the physical appearance of an area. They tackle environmental problems such as litter, graffiti and dog fouling as well as promoting community safety. They also help to deter anti-social behaviour; reduce the fear of crime and foster social inclusion. In many ways they are very similar to our CID security officers/City Ambassadors. Do they have any specific powers? The jury is still out on that one – some of the police feel that they should have limited powers to optimise effectiveness, many others, including most wardens themselves, do not want to have any police powers. They feel that they will be perceived as police which will not be helpful in dealing with their particular social issues, they want to be seen far more as an extension of the community. Do they provide a lead for us? I think it is a model well worth examining in detail because our problems are identical but far more widespread. Whether our communities would accept this approach is questionable and the bottom line of course is sustainable funding. The Australian report at the conference was on community ‘night patrols’, an approach evidently fairly widespread in Aboriginal communities and that may have lessons for us.

This morning, Friday, we meet to discuss the possibility of establishing an international ‘Warden network’, I’ll keep you posted, regards,



Neil