Published: Thursday, 27th November, 2008 11:20
Anger at council plans to charge for crime-busting service in poor areas
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Councillor Mike Rumney
A COUNCIL move to extend Abbeyview’s successful community warden scheme but charge a fee from residents who benefit has been slammed as “disgraceful”.
Wardens – and the junior wardens – have helped to curb crime and anti-social behaviour in one of Dunfermline’s poorest areas.
But now the locals may have to pay for it.
Fife Council is also considering a scheme in which people who live in blocks of flats would have to stump up for a stair-cleaning service.
At a meeting on Wednesday, Councillor Mike Rumney led the protests against the ideas and stated, “To try to impose these charges on people would be an administrative and bureaucratic nightmare and local people will not support it.”
And fellow Labour councillor Bill McCulloch hit out, “I think this is totally unworkable and I’m concerned this could be a slippery slope if we start charging for other services.
“This is the wrong way to go about community safety issues. I think it’s disgraceful.”
Councillors were in favour of extending the scheme throughout Fife, making the wardens’ jobs permanent and increasing their numbers to five senior wardens and 31 full-time wardens.
They also backed the idea for a Fife-wide community caretaker service which would create 26 posts to complement the work done by wardens.
Together with the caretaker service, the wardens scheme currently costs £1.5million a year.
A report before yesterday’s City of Dunfermline area committee stated, “One possible source of funding is to charge all those who benefit from the provision of warden and caretaker services.
“The council, and its predecessor authorities, has not traditionally taken this approach although a pilot factoring project is to be launched in Kirkcaldy in the near future.”
All the area committees have been asked for their views before the housing and communities committee takes the final decision.
The council recently agreed to extend the wardens scheme into Touch, which was welcomed, but Mr Rumney said, “I doubt if they will be as welcoming to the idea that those local people who benefit from the scheme should be charged for the service.
“The idea that this can be discreetly hidden away as a charge for factoring is simply not acceptable.
“If the council are to go down the road of charging local people, whether for stair cleaning, landscape management etc, they should examine what is happening in the eastern expansion area.
“The DEX area has been plagued by a variety of factors and poor service to the residents.”
Councillors were also asked whether they believed the council should “provide stair-cleaning services in common entrance flatted properties of six residents or more and charge for this appropriately?”.
They were also asked to consider if the charge should be added to the council tax, be billed annually or, for tenants, added to their rent.
Councillor Jim Burke said, “When I was young it was a matter of pride for residents and the cleaning of their close.
“Why should we clean stairs for people who live there? I just don’t get it.”
And he added, “When you try to charge a group of people for a service, some will say ‘No, I’m not paying’.
“What do we do in that situation?”
Councillor Tony Martin said, “I’m keen to see what happens with the pilot project in Kirkcaldy but the reality is someone has to pay for this.
“If we’re not going to charge we have to find money from budgets and it’s a significant amount of money.
“If we take burdens on to make things better we have to make sure they are funded. That’s our job.”
Graeme McRoberts, the council’s head of services (south), said, “Clearly there are concerns about the principle, whether it’s workable and enforceable and that’s something that will be reflected back (to the housing and communities committee).”
Councillor Willie Sullivan said, “Anything we decide as a collective provision should be paid for collectively in some form of taxation.
“This administration decided not to put up council tax but to try to raise money through individual services, effectively the privatisation of services.”
SNP councillor Brian Goodall accused Labour of “trying to make political capital” out of the situation and said nothing concrete had been decided or proposed.
He wasn’t in favour of individual charging and he proposed an amendment that they couldn’t answer the question of charges as they didn’t have enough information at that time. It was approved.
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