They’re here to tackle issues such as littering and overgrown hedges across York. Meet the Neighbourhood Caretakers.
The City of York Council team has just launched.
They will to work with residents, councillors and volunteers to respond to issues without the constraint of schedules facing the council’s existing public realm staff.
Team foreperson Chris Ferry said they hoped to be able to visit each of York’s 21 council wards twice a year depending on workloads.
Cllr Jenny Kent, the council’s Labour administration’s environment spokesperson, said £150,000 invested in the team this year had created extra resources despite the difficult financial circumstances facing local authorities.
York is thought to be the first council to bring in a Neighbourhood Caretaker service.
The new seven-strong team will work across the area covered by the council which will be divided into four to plan and organise their work.
Plans for the caretakers includes walkabouts with councillors to find issues and responding to problems raised by them and staff rather than through the council’s existing complaints channels.
They are also set to support projects run by residents and volunteers, such as through Adopt A Verge programmes and tree-planting, along with events like the Great British Spring Clean.
The team is equipped with a new street sweeper designed for alleyways and narrower streets.
Clearing litter
Neighbourhood Caretakers were out picking up litter and cutting back hedges in an alleyway off Cornlands Road on Monday.
Salem Branch, who has been recently recruited to the team, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service he hoped they would help to put pride into York’s neighbourhoods.
The neighbourhood caretaker said: “There’s always something we can do.
“Sometimes we’ll be doing lots of little jobs that can be done quickly like litter picking and other times we could be working at one place for a week.
“I come from customer-based work originally which is about making sure people are happy and for me the before and after of revealing what was hidden behind a bush or what we can see once we’ve taken rubbish away is what I like about the job.”
The foreperson added: “We’ll be working with community groups, if one wants to clear an alleyway for instance but they don’t have the equipment or can’t dispose of the green waste we can come and do the grunt work that makes their lives easier.
“Once we’ve done that work and things become more manageable people might take some initiative in their areas and keep the work going themselves.
“If people would like to do more but the task is too big for them we can give them a fresh start.”
Additional resource
Environment Executive Member Cllr Jenny Kent said the team would help to co-ordinate work across the authority’s efforts to maintain the public realm and its housing and estates.
She added staff who had been transferred onto the team from within the council would have their roles backfilled.
The Labour executive member said: “We heard that people wanted work doing and had priorities for us to deal with beyond our current areas of focus, the team has been set up in response to that.
“Neighbourhood Caretakers will build on the work we’re already doing, they’re an additional resource and it’s growth in the public realm which is always welcome.
“We could have added people into the existing public realm team and we’d always want to to do that, but its the responsiveness of the Neigbourhood Caretakers is what’s being added on.”
The launch of Neighbourhood Caretakers this month comes after councillors approved the funding for the team as part of the authority’s Budget for the current 2025-6 financial year.
A proposal to create the team was among the manifesto pledges made by Labour during the 2023 local elections which brought them to power.
