Camden News: Street Warden | King's Cross

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Camden News - by PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 5 June 2008

Cllr James King

Street warden decision ‘naive’

THE successes in battling drugs and prostitution in King’s Cross could be damaged by the decision to remove street wardens from the area, residents warned.
After more than a decade of work to clean up the once-notorious red-light district, campaigner Pamela Mansi warned Town Hall chiefs that their decision last week to remove the dedicated team of wardens from patrolling King’s Cross streets showed “inexperience and naivety”.
She said: “We marched in the street about cleaning up King’s Cross, and it worked. Drugs and prostitution are not around the station like they were in the old days. I would hate desperately to see it go backwards.”
Three teams of eight civilian street wardens have patrolled King’s Cross, Bloomsbury and Camden Town since their introduction in 2002.
But last Wednesday, after months of debate, the council approved a change in their duties so that they would be available to patrol anywhere in the borough, arguing that this was fairer on problem wards including Kilburn and Highgate.
New Town Hall crime chief Councillor James King said: “It makes no sense to keep wardens in the same three areas of the borough based on old crime data. But it makes sense to have wardens in areas which need them most, based on the extensive, up-to-date knowledge of anti-social behaviour and crime patterns we now have.”
Opponents of the change argue that historic knowledge of their areas was the street wardens’ greatest strength and breaking that bond would render them far less useful, as well as exposing places like King’s Cross to the return of anti-social behaviour.
King’s Cross councillor Jonathan Simpson said: “Effectively this is a cut from the King‘s Cross area – the success story of street wardens is how they’re able to build relationships with young people because they know them – there will be a loss of links to the community.”
The wardens will now be split between the north and south of the borough, and will be tasked to an area for at least six months if the council believes it has serious anti-social behaviour problems.

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