FEARS have been raised over a cost-cutting move that means community wardens are spending less time on East Renfrewshire’s streets.

The wardens are employed by East Renfrewshire Council to act as eyes and ears in local communities, attending incidents of anti-social behaviour and providing out-of-hours security.

However, in a bid to balance the council budget, staff are no longer on patrol between the hours of 1am and 7.30am.

That has led to concerns about community safety.

Rosaleen Reilly, chair of Barrhead Community Council, is among those to express concern.

She told the Barrhead News: “Essentially, it is the night-shift that is not being covered - but you would think these are the hours where wardens would be most useful for the community, especially during the weekends.”

Council chiefs have said cutting the hours of the community wardens had been a tough decision that was made in light of increasing pressure on local authority budgets and yearly increases in the amount of savings required to balance books.

They added that the authority is doing everything it can to offset the impact of these pressures by modernising services to make them as efficient as possible.

turn to page five The total savings to be made by the council in this financial year amount to almosy from council budgets more than 70 per cent - or £3.9m - has been achieved through being more efficient at what we do to protect frontline services as far as possible.

However, ERC maintain there was plenty of opportunity for the public to inform themselves of these changes.

A spokesperson for ERC further explained reducing the operational hours of the Community Warden Service was a decision made as part of the Council’s 2015 – 18 budget process which involved a full 6-week public consultation.

The spokesperson continued: “As part of this consultation process all of the proposals - including the changes to the Community Warden Service – were detailed in a special budget booklet issued to all households in East Renfrewshire.

“The consultation also included a community engagement workshop and online consultation feedback process.”

When asked why the ERC’s website has not been updated to show the changes, the spokesperson responded: “It is important to stress our 24-hour CCTV control room and 24-hour community alarm service has not changed.

“The community warden service has maintained its primary function to provide a daytime operation delivering a visible reassurance to the public in relation to its role in reducing antisocial behaviour and in supporting the police and other key services in those aims.

“We continue to work confidently with our community partners, including the local police, to ensure we deal with any incidents that occur in a timely manner.”

To contact East Renfrewshire’s Community Warden Service call 0800 013 0076.