Newport councillors cautious over town traffic warden contract
Councillors have been warned to study the small print carefully before signing a contract to part-fund a traffic warden.
Newport Town Council and Wellington Town Council have agreed to pay the wages of a Community Support Officer to help ease parking woes in both towns.
Unlike other CSOs in the West Mercia Police area, this one will have the power to ticket parking offenders.
A final contract has been drawn up and is due to be signed off on April 21. The officer could be on the streets within weeks.
Newport Town Council has agreed to pay £10,000 for the trial period of one year, Wellington Town Council £5,000 and the Police Crime Commissioner the remainder.
The total cost is just short of £30,000, Newport council clerk Lee Jakeman said. But at last night's Newport Town Council meeting, Councillor Tim Nelson said he was not satisfied with the draft agreement drawn up by the police.
He said the current wording could mean the CSO is asked to do other jobs when they should be concentrating on parking enforcement.
Councillor Nelson also wants to make sure that Newport has the officer twice as much as Wellington to reflect the fact that Newport Town Council is paying twice as much.
He said: "I am extremely unhappy with the service level agreement. It clearly says that their priorities will include parking enforcement.
"I'd ask you to be extremely wary of that. They could spend one per cent of their time doing parking and it would fulfil the agreement. If we are paying then I expect to see someone in this town doing traffic enforcement."
Councillors agreed that the contract should be studied carefully before being signed – but said they were committed to following through with the unusual agreement after discussions with police superintendent Nav Malik.
