CROYDON IN CRISIS: Labour leadership wants to replace council staff with high street bounty hunters who get commission on every fine they issue, using a company that has been accused of ‘profiting from poverty’.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Farewell to NSOs: council cuts will see this service privatised
Whoever is elected Mayor next week will inherit a borough with 20 fewer Neighbourhood Safety Officers than worked in Croydon last year, in another back-door cut being implemented at the cash-strapped council.
The council is axing the majority of its NSOs to make a saving of £1.1million over the course of this and the next financial year.
The Labour group, which did so much to bankrupt the council, wants to replace the NSOs with high street bounty hunters from security firm Kingdom, who would issue on-the-spot £60 fines for even the most trivial offences. Under similar arrangements with other councils and land-owners, Kingdom typically gets to keep 85 to 90per cent of fines levied, with the balance being paid over to the commissioning body.
Croydon could therefore be pocketing £10 a pop every time Kingdom’s private police force pounce on an unsuspecting member of the public. That should slowly chipping away at the council’s £1.5billion debt mountain…
Perhaps this is what Labour Mayoral candidate, Val Shawcross, means in her election literature when she talks of “A New Direction”?
Like the “cuts by stealth” to Meals on Wheels exclusively revealed by Inside Croydon, the decision to drop the NSOs has not been publicly discussed by the Labour-controlled council leadership. The decision was contained in a single line within about 800 pages of financial papers nodded through at the council cabinet’s budget meeting last month. The report’s authors include three of the senior Labour councillors who are seeking re-election on May 5.
Bad news buried: the cuts to the NSOs were buried in 800 pages of budget reports last month
The removal of at least two-thirds of the NSO team effectively marks the abandonment of the Labour council’s flagship policy intended to tackle fly-tipping, littering and other anti-social behaviour around the borough.
The council’s website still reflects the original NSO position, introduced nearly eight years ago: “Our neighbourhood safety officers (NSOs) work closely with the police safer neighbourhood teams, internal teams and departments and other partner agencies to support community safety.
“The NSOs enforce national legislation in line with local and statutory legislation to deal with anti-social behaviour and environmental offences.”
The council says that NSOs can, “request name and address of a person for a fixed penalty notice (FPN) and offences that cause injury, alarm and distress to another person or damage or loss of another’s property”, and similarly act with “a person acting in an anti-social manner”.
NSOs also had powers to confiscate alcohol from any person under the age of 18 years; confiscate alcohol from any person in a designated public place; and confiscate cigarettes and tobacco products from any person under the age of 16 years
On commission: privatised security firms have generated millions of pounds from fines
The council says that NSOs “also act as professional witnesses, gathering evidence, interviewing witnesses and perpetrators and taking statements that can be used as evidence in the courts.
“In addition they undertake a raft of prevention, intervention and diversion activities [for example] referring a young person for acceptable behaviour agreements (ABAs).”
Croydon Council, under Tory and Labour control, has been kicking around the notion of privatising its high street patrols for the best part of a decade, embracing the idea of security guards dressed in “hard man” uniforms that make them look very much like police officers, while they skulk in corners to catch out accidental littering in a return to some of the dodgiest practices of the 19th Century.
A 2013 report from the Manifesto Club called the practice “The Corruption of Punishment”.
Commission-based fining had, the report said, “led to a corruption of punishment. The official issuing the fine has a (direct or indirect) financial interest in punishing people. Their concern becomes not to discharge a public service, but to look for people they can fine. There is no room for leniency, or for issuing a warning, since every missed fine is missed income”.
Even the Magistrates’ Association took a dim view of the practice, transferring powers away from the public courts system and into the hands of private bounty hunters.
“Magistrates’ Court is much more transparent and consistent,” a spokesman said. “It delivers justice over and above what the private company can deliver.
“Private companies don’t report to anybody, the public can’t question it – there’s very limited appeal provisions.”
The Manifesto Club said: “People are being fined for increasingly trivial incidents – from dropping a match stick, to a piece of cotton falling off a glove. More worryingly, often these fines are given out by private companies who are working on a commission basis.
“The report argues that such profiteering punishment works against the interests of justice and public service. We recommend that fines be used only in proportion to the offence, and when necessary for the public interest.”
On the company’s website, Kingdom boasts of “£6million raised for local authorities in 12 months”.
Awarding work: Kingdom like to accentuate the positives in their work
They say, “You can deploy tactful, professional enforcement teams in your problem hot spots.” Which makes their staff sound like some kind of hemorrhoid cream.
But it can appear to be a lot more sinister than that.
“I believe this company is profiting from poverty,” according to a former Kingdom employee, in interviews with the Grauniad newspaper in 2019.
Kingdom Services Group, with its head office just outside Manchester, have denied any misconduct and says it maintained “high standards”. The company says that its officers undertake a comprehensive training programme and “operate under some of the tightest legal guidelines”.
But The Guardian was contacted by whistleblowers who alleged that staff were encouraged to compete to issue as many fines as possible, even operating a league table in one area.
One training team was accused of getting staff to conceal logos on their uniform and to hide in bushes or behind cars to improve their chances of catching members of the public.
Kingdom were said to have generated £1.4million in fines over just eight months in one council area alone.
A New Direction for Croydon, indeed…
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