Scottish Government

CHAPTER FIVE THE WARDENS' ROLE

Introduction

5.1 The purpose of this Chapter is to look at the wardens' role by analysing the various activities that they are involved in. To do this, a number of data sources have been drawn on, including:-

• The 24 month monitoring template returns submitted to the Executive (see Paragraphs 2.12 to 2.18);
• The wardens' survey; and
• The analysis of detailed activity logs that 9 schemes had submitted as annexes to their 24 month returns (see Paragraph 2.50-2.51).

Using these different sources enables the evidence to be triangulated and uncovers some interesting discrepancies, in particular between the wardens' perceptions of what they do and what they actually seem to do.

The Wardens' Activities

5.2 The 24 month templates give detailed information on the activities that the wardens have been involved in across Scotland. To make sense of these they have been structured under a number of themes:-

• Crime and antisocial behaviour;
• Community safety;
• Community engagement;
• Vulnerable groups (including youths and elderly residents);
• Information point;
• Environmental services; and
• Mediation services.

5.3 Crime and antisocial behaviour was the most obvious activity associated with the warden schemes. Key activities included:-

• High visibility patrols designed to act as a deterrent;
• Reporting suspicious incidents;
• Acting as professional witnesses; and
• Attending minor antisocial behaviour incidents.

5.4 A closely linked theme was that of community safety. This largely involved wardens working with other services (in particular fire and rescue and police) on key safety messages and personal safety issues. For example:-

• In Aberdeen the wardens distributed leaflets on behalf of the fire and rescue service dealing with home safety;
• Participation in joint antisocial behaviour initiatives (with antisocial behaviour teams and the police). For example both Dundee and South Lanarkshire have Bonfire Initiatives which involve the wardens working with the council's environmental department, the fire and rescue service and police to identify and remove potentially dangerous bonfires; and
• Monitoring empty homes when residents are on holiday.

5.5 Community engagement is a particularly significant area given that building strong links with the community may make it easier to deal effectively with crime, antisocial behaviour and other neighbourhood issues. Key activities included:-

• Developing and maintaining strong links with the community;
• Acting as a communications link between the community and other agencies, in particular other council departments;
• Giving talks on the warden service to groups, including tenants' and residents' groups, community councils, schools, and sheltered housing residents;
• Working with community groups to address key areas of concern;
• Helping to set up and run resident events;
• Building relationships with young people on the street and through visiting youth clubs and events;
• Attending gala days and other community events;
• Becoming members of School Boards; and
• Setting up neighbourhood watches (and similar schemes).

5.6 Working with vulnerable groups (such as youths, the elderly and others identified as vulnerable) was another key theme. This fits with the community engagement theme, but focuses more on tailored individual interventions. This can include youth diversionary activities, liaison with the elderly and home visits to vulnerable residents. In rural areas wardens also visit those who were isolated to provide reassurance and support. Specific activities mentioned included:-

• Organising and managing "midnight" or "twilight" football leagues;
• Working with young people on the redevelopment of a play park;
• Visiting elderly residents in their homes to carry out odd jobs;
• In rural areas, providing transport to elderly residents for essential journeys;
• Providing elderly residents with litter pickers to keep their immediate environment clean; and
• Delivering advice as part of a bogus caller initiative.

5.7 Wardens are also frequently used as an information point, being seen as a non-threatening point of access for information and advice on council services. This can cover the broad range of local authority provision such as housing services, welfare, environmental issues and social work. They also provide information on crime prevention.

5.8 Given their presence in certain localities, the wardens also make a contribution to improving the physical appearance of areas by tackling environmental issues. This, again, covered a wide range of individual activities, such as:-

• Identifying graffiti, vandalism, abandoned vehicles and fly tipping and informing the relevant council service;
• Organising clean ups of certain areas;
• Checking on void properties;
• Identifying road and lighting faults and referring these to the appropriate service; and
• Carrying out estate management inspections.

5.9 Wardens also played a mediation role. This was largely focused on the resolution of low level disputes and was undertaken in collaboration with the relevant council departments (such as housing). Given the wardens' presence and profile in certain localities, they also acted as independent facilitators or unofficial brokers who were less threatening to residents than a council official. An example comes from East Dunbartonshire where informal family conferences were held with identified repeat offenders and their parents. Here wardens outline the nature of the complaints received, the subject's involvement, and elicited a response from the subject in the presence of their parents. Parents were often unaware of their child's involvement and were generally appreciative of the opportunity to remedy the situation before it might reach the judicial system.

5.10 It was clear from the analysis that wardens undertook a wide range of activities and appear to be willing to respond to the demands of the area in which they operated. As one scheme manager puts it the "responsive nature of the wardens' remit means the community sees them as a resource that is available to them to deal with issues that matter locally."

Relative Importance of These Activities

5.11 In order to gauge the extent to which wardens spend their time on different duties, respondents to the wardens' survey were asked to rank the amount of time they spent on 11 specified activities, with a 1 being given to the activity on which they spent the least time and 11 to the activity on which they spent the most. Table 5.1 shows the activities on which they indicated that the least and most time was spent.

5.12 As can be seen from the Table:-

• Over a third of respondents felt that they spent most of their time dealing with youth disorder;
• 15% of respondents indicated that they spent most of their time dealing with fly tipping;
• 13% and 12% respectively indicated that they spent most of their time dealing with other instances of antisocial behaviour and graffiti; and
• Less than 10% of respondents indicated that they spent most of their time dealing with other activities such as neighbourhood disputes.

5.13 In terms of what wardens said they spent the least amount of time on:-

• Twenty seven per cent said they spent the least of their time dealing with Assaults;
• Crimes of dishonesty and fire raising were the activities that took up the next smallest amounts of time; and
• The balance was spread across the remaining 8 activities.

That assaults and crimes of dishonesty account for a small amount of time may be as these are criminal offences that the wardens lack the powers to respond to.

TABLE 5.1 Activities that Reportedly Took Up the Most and the Least Amount of the Wardens' Time in an Average Week

N=101

5.14 Table 5.2 analyses the data by case study area, looking at the activities that the respondents said they spent most time dealing with. Given the low response rates from some schemes (in particular, Dumfries and Galloway and East Renfrewshire) the results need to be interpreted with a degree of caution. Overall what emerges is that:-

• Dealing with youth disorder was the single most important category in 7 of the 9 schemes;
• The 2 schemes where youth disorder was not significant (Dumfries and Galloway and East Renfrewshire) were both schemes from which only 1 response was received. As such they may not be representative; and
• On-street drinking and dealing with fly tipping also featured as activities that reportedly took up a reasonable amount of time.

5.15 However, the main message was that dealing with antisocial behaviour by young people seemed to be one of the main activities of the wardens, both across Scotland and in individual schemes. This would seem to back up the views of those who felt that young people were the perpetrators of most antisocial behaviour (see, for example, Paragraph 2.42).

TABLE 5.2 Activities on Which Wardens Claimed Most Time was Spent Across the Case Study Areas

N=101

The Wardens' Log Analysis

5.16 The earlier analysis of activities is based upon reporting by the wardens themselves. To triangulate this information, and add depth, a cross-section of wardens' activity logs were analysed. These had been submitted with the 24 month reports by the 9 schemes listed in Table 5.3. It will be seen that, fortuitously some of these are case study schemes. Further details of the methodology are given in Chapter 2 (Paragraphs 2.50-2.51).

5.17 Table 5.3 shows the Primary and Secondary activities that the wardens in each of the 9 schemes had been involved in according to their logs. As can be seen, many were involved primarily in environmental duties such as dealing with rubbish and fly tipping. Indeed, environmental issues were the primary activity in 3 of the 9 schemes, and the secondary activity in a further 5.

5.18 In 2 schemes the primary activity was completely different to any of the others. In Shetland the main activity was promoting the warden service to the community by generating positive publicity. In East Renfrewshire, the wardens' main activity was given as "General Patrolling and Observation", which would indicate that the wardens play a more passive role than in other schemes. However there were also variations within the sub-areas of individual schemes, and these are explored later in this Chapter.

TABLE 5.3 Wardens' Activities

5.19 Table 5.4 shows the number of incidents recorded by wardens in each of the areas. Although it is not a like-for-like comparison (in that the timescales for which incidents have been recorded varied across the schemes) it is useful for building up a picture of the activities which appear most often in the reports. What emerges is that:-

• Estate management accounts for over a third of incidents overall and up to two thirds in some schemes;

TABLE 5.4 Numbers of Incidents Recorded By Community Wardens

Note:-

1. Dumfries and Galloway also dealt with 248 Syringes/Needle incidents.

2. East Renfrewshire recorded 9,925 incidents as "General Patrolling".

• Environmental issues account for 16% of incidents overall. However, this is highly skewed by North Lanarkshire, where environment accounts for three quarters of reported incidents;
• Fly tipping accounts for 10% of incidents overall. Again there is variation across schemes, with fly tipping in some accounting for a fifth to a quarter of their incidents;
• Community relations accounts for 10% of incidents overall, although North Ayrshire and Shetland highly skews the figures; and
• Surprisingly youth annoyance accounted for only 4% of total incidents that were recorded, although this varied from a high of 43% of the incidents logged in Inverclyde, through 30% in Stirling to none in 5 of the schemes.

5.20 The relatively small number of incidents involving youths in all but one scheme is surprising, given the perception (mentioned earlier, Paragraph 2.42 that young people were responsible for much of the antisocial behaviour and the views of survey respondents, 38% of whom claimed that youth disorder was the activity on which they spent most of their time in the average week (Table 5.1). Given that few schemes have an explicit environmental focus (Paragraph 3.2) the importance of environmental incidents is also surprising. These discrepancies may reflect the fact that Table 5.4 is showing the number of reported incidents, rather than their duration or intensity. One also needs to bear in mind that different sub-sets of schemes are being compared. However, it may also be indicating that there are differences between what the wardens think they do and what they actually do. To explore this, the analysis of the logs will now be looked at in greater detail.

Environmental Issues

5.21 Wardens in 5 of the 9 schemes shown in Table 5.4 spent much of their time dealing with environmental issues. In Dumfries and Galloway, wardens had to remove a large number of used syringes and needles from the local area between January and December 2005. This problem was particularly pronounced in the Stakeford area, which accounted for 52% of all these incidents.

5.22 The logs that wardens keep of their patrols in Dumfries and Galloway give a flavour of the incidents they responded to:-

• "Syringe outside plant trolley at front door of Homebase;"
• "Two syringes on road reported by tenant of Osborne Crescent;"
• "Evidence of drug misuse and syringes in river;" and
• "Rubbish in bin area outside empty flat overflowing from bins. Approximately 5 black bags."

5.23 In North Lanarkshire, the activity report for the period November 2004 to June 2006 shows that the vast majority of incidents (74%) involved responding to environmental problems. For example, 43% of incidents were recorded as Street Cleaning, whilst a further 30% were recorded as Cleansing (that is Special Uplifts and cleaning public areas).

Antisocial Behaviour

5.24 Other warden schemes are more focused on dealing with antisocial behaviour and issues surrounding crime, particularly with regard to young people. In Inverclyde, North Ayrshire and Stirling wardens had to deal with many incidents where young people were causing trouble or annoyance in the area (Table 5.4).

5.25 From the 1 ^st July to the 18 ^th July 2006 in Inverclyde, 43% of incidents specifically concerned young people who were loitering, playing games in inappropriate areas, or causing other kinds of trouble. A further 15% of incidents were other kinds of antisocial behaviour not specifically confined to young people, such as people drinking in public places.

5.26 However, there are differences in the volume of antisocial activity in the sub-areas of some schemes. In South Lanarkshire, vandalism, graffiti, and other types of antisocial behaviour accounted for 20% of wardens' incidents between 1 ^st July 2004 and 30 ^th June 2006. However these 3 categories accounted for 41% of incidents in both Hamilton and Cambuslang, but just 7% in Clydesdale.

5.27 There are also differences in the volume of antisocial behaviour related incidents in the sub-areas of the Inverclyde scheme. For example, youth problems accounted for 25% of the total number of incidents that wardens were called to in the Fancy Farm and Bow Road areas, but 67% of incidents in Port Glasgow West.

5.28 The logs from the wardens in Inverclyde give an indication of the types of activity that they were engaged in. Examples of entries included:-

• "Three boys opened up a glass recycling bin and took bottles out to smash-they smashed one, before we pulled up and took the rest off them;"
• "On arriving at Cumberland Road to patrol we spoke to an out-of-hours joiner who informed us that whilst he had been boarding up a window someone had thrown bottles at him;" and
• "We walked up the stairs of the Bow Road shops and saw 3 youths standing in a doorway. One had a baseball bat. We asked them to move away from shops, and they refused…one moved away from the doorway and swung the baseball bat at us and verbally abused us…we walked away and rang the police."

Schemes with a Mixed Focus

5.29 Other schemes in Table 5.4 dealt with a more varied mix of incidents. In Edinburgh, fly-tipping accounted for a quarter of incidents between July 2005 and June 2006, whilst environmental incidents, such as cleaning up gardens and common areas, accounted for a further 19%. However, dealing with other types of antisocial behaviour accounted for 19% of recorded incidents. Despite this, the scheme manager suggested that the focus of activity has moved away from environmental issues towards dealing with antisocial behaviour, although this does not, as yet, show up in the incident logs (Paragraph 3.11).

5.30 The logs for the Edinburgh East team show that wardens in this area have a variety of environmental and antisocial behaviour issues to deal with, as the following quotations show:-

• "Whilst on patrol visited a tenant to ask about rubbish that's being dumped at the side of the building. Got no answer so carded the tenant and asked if they could remove it ASAP as it was a fire hazard;"
• "Received call from tenant to say that noise coming from the flat above was intolerable. When we arrived we found that there was a party at the flat above;"
• "A tenant stopped us for advice. She is having a lot of problems with kids going over her fence to get into the back of the business centre. We gave her an incident sheet to collect back next week;" and
• "On patrol we came across a pile of builder's rubble and tyres on waste ground at Niddrie Mains Terrace. We could find no evidence of who fly-tipped the load."

Schemes with a Unique Focus

5.31 Two of the schemes in Table 5.4 appeared to have a primary activity that was unique in its scale when compared to the other schemes. In East Renfrewshire between the 1 ^st July 2005 and 30 ^th June 2006, 59% of incidents were classed as "General Patrolling and Observational Duties" (these have been placed under Estate Management in Table 5.4). The next most reported activity was "Checking on Void Properties" (8% of incidents). This mix is, however, broadly in line with the aims of the scheme which include:-

"Providing a visible patrolling deterrent to certain forms of lower level nuisance and antisocial behaviour and pro-actively responding to certain environmental issues. Generally to build relationships with the local communities"

5.32 In Shetland, the wardens were mostly engaged in promoting their own service to members of the community by generating positive publicity. This accounted for 42% of incidents (they talked to 688 people). Twenty two per cent of their activity was dealing with rubbish, whilst 4% was dealing with graffiti.

Wardens' Activities and their "Fit" with Schemes' Aims

5.33 The information given above shows that in many of the schemes, community wardens have been engaged in a wide variety of activities. However, it is important to compare the activities to the original aims of the respective schemes, to identify whether wardens were doing jobs that they were not in their original remit. This has been done for the 9 schemes in Table 5.4.

5.34 It would appear that, in the majority of schemes, the activities the wardens were engaged in were compatible with the schemes' aims. This largely reflected the fact that most schemes had aims that can encompass a whole range of activities. For example:-

• In Edinburgh, one stated aim is to "Impact on Crime";
• In East Renfrewshire, the stated aims include "to provide a visible patrolling deterrent to certain forms of lower level nuisance and antisocial behaviour and pro-actively responding to certain environmental issues"; and
• In Inverclyde, the stated aims include "Reduce crime; reduce fear of crime; reduce antisocial behaviour; improve environmental quality."

5.35 However, in 2 of the schemes this does not seem to be the case. In North Lanarkshire, 74% of incidents logged related to environmental improvements such as clean ups and street cleaning. This would seem not necessarily to fit with the aims of the scheme which are to:-

• Ease the fear of crime within the areas in which community wardens are working;
• Be a high profile presence within the community and be a visual deterrent to crime; and
• Be the eyes and ears of the community, looking for and reporting issues that need attention during patrols.

Given this focus it is unclear why the North Lanarkshire wardens should be engaged in so much clean up activity.

5.36 In Shetland, over a third (42%) of recorded incidents were classed as Education, that is promoting the warden service to the community (placed under Community Relations in Table 5.4). This does not figure directly in the aims of the scheme, which are to:-

• Prevent crime; and
• Improve the environment.

Although 29% of incidents could be classed as "improving the environment", for example dealing with rubbish (22%), graffiti (4%) and vandalism (3%), it is not clear why informing people of the wardens' role should be categorised separately. Indeed, it could be argued that this is something that should be normal practice for every warden's scheme.

Changing Roles

5.37 Although the above analysis has produced some contradictory results, what it clearly shows is that the duties of wardens were extensive and subject to change at short notice. Indeed, the wardens' job descriptions for each of the case study areas highlighted the need for a flexible approach in the discharge of duties. A good example of this was found in Orkney where wardens were involved in a wide range of duties including catching stray dogs and operating the "smiley face" ¹⁴ traffic control system.

5.38 The consultations found that duties can alter depending on the time of year and the initiatives being undertaken in a particular area. For example, in the summer wardens can have a particular focus on reducing malicious fires in grassy or wooded areas and protecting schools against vandalism over the holiday period. In the winter, when there are fewer young people on the streets, wardens' duties can involve visiting local youth clubs and checking closes and blocks of flats where individuals may congregate. Around Guy Fawkes Night a number of schemes have targeted the removal of materials that could be used for fire raising, and report a reduction in damage caused by fires due to this.

Conclusions

5.39 What is clear from the various sources that have been analysed in this Chapter is that the wardens undertake a variety of roles and that these vary according to the characteristics and pressures in specific areas. Despite this variation, all of the schemes had the following elements, although the extent to which these were present in the day-to-day duties of the wardens was dependent on the scheme's focus and the nature of the operational area:-

• Community Liaison - This was the central tenet of all the schemes and was developed by wardens being visible in the patrol areas, listening to residents' concerns and, crucially, being seen to take appropriate action;
• Security and Safety - Attending and investigating any reports of antisocial behaviour. This included liaison with police and acting as professional witnesses ¹⁵ in relation to such incidents as well as providing reassurance to more vulnerable members of the community; and
• Environmental - This function is extensive and can include the monitoring and reporting of issues such as:-
• • Graffiti and vandalism;
  • Litter;
  • Void properties;
  • Fly-tipping;
  • Road and lighting faults; and
  • Abandoned vehicles.

5.40 The concept of the wardens as the "eyes and ears" of the community permeated strongly throughout the analysis, in the various consultations and interviews with the managers. Wardens were seen as being a conduit for community concerns, through which remedial action could be taken quickly and effectively.

5.41 Various initiatives were common across the warden scheme areas. These were often devised in response to concerns from the community or other services. Examples included:-

• Vulnerable adults initiatives, which involved wardens visiting recent victims of crime or antisocial behaviour to provide reassurance, as in Perth;
• Patrolling schools during school holiday periods in order to reduce the incidence of vandalism, as in Dundee, Inverclyde and South Lanarkshire;
• Visiting "pattern fire" spots ¹⁶ on behalf of the fire and rescue service in order to deter potential fire-raising as in Aberdeen and Inverclyde; and
• Delivering activities such as football competitions, Christmas card competitions and cycling proficiency tests to local children, which were common activities in a number of areas.

5.42 However, the ability to draw on a variety of sources of evidence has shown that there were differences between the wardens' perceptions of what they did and what records indicated they spent their time on. The main differences seemed to be between the perceived importance of youth disorder and the relatively small number of incidents that this accounted for in the 9 schemes. Although this may be explained, to some extent, by differing samples and the intensity and durations of incidents, the analysis of logs shows that environmental incidents predominate. This may reflect local management priorities and it is to this that we turn in the next Chapter.