Resources fear over tackling Walsall street drinking

Councillor Carl Creaney, who represents Willenhall South, said there are not enough police officers to stop offenders, while local authority officers do not have the same powers.

The issue was discussed as members of the economy and environment overview and scrutiny committee considered plans for a new council street scene strategy.

The aim of the strategy is to make streets across the borough "cleaner, greener, safer and stronger". It is being consulted on and will go before cabinet next year.

Councillor Creaney said: “Where you have ‘enforce’ and tackling street drinking, how do we propose to do that when we have no police force to enforce it? As a local authority we don’t have the power.

“I wouldn’t like to be a council officer trying to deal with these on their own.

“There’s been many a time I’ve been in my own town centre and see the local people up there getting drunk – stoned as well as drinking – and can’t see a copper because they work four on and four off.

“There is a team of seven officers and they’re having to cover from New Invention to Willenhall. And I wouldn’t like to be a council officer trying to deal with these on my own. Not a chance.”

David Elrington, the council’s head of community safety and enforcement, said: “We meet regularly with the police for a great many subjects, one of which is the management of the town centre and other places.

“We have a group of community safety enforcement officers who patrol around our district centres and they are empowered to enforce the public spaces protection order and issue warnings, fixed penalties or prosecution for street drinking.

“We had one success earlier this year with a street drinker in the town centre for failure to stop drinking when asked. We’ve got another two cases going through the system.

“Ideally the police would be patrolling intensively all day every day. Our officers can patrol on their own and have had some success in tackling street drinking problems.

“Neither the police or ourselves have resource to patrol every street in every part of the town but we do it on an intelligence-based focus.”

He added: “We don’t want to put own officers in harm's way as they haven’t got the same powers as the police.

“We do have lapel cameras so as they approach offenders, everything is recorded. Police will attend if anything gets out of hand.”