Decision details

Councillor Melvin Wallace, Cabinet member for Culture and Community Engagement, introduced the report

Cabinet was informed that the report before it sought a decision on whether to attest of the permanent Parks Protection Officers. Attestation would provide the Officers with the same powers as Police officers and would allow them to better deal with the more serious incidents that could arise in parks and open spaces.

All current Parks Protection Team officers have had previous experience in policing and were either formerly trained by the Metropolitan Police or as parks police constables.  Further supplementary training - as changes of legislation arose - would be arranged with West London Parks Police, a much larger parks police service. 

Reasons for the decision:

To more effectively deal with the more serious incidents that could arise in the borough’s parks and open spaces.

Other options considered:

The option of not proceeding with attesting the Parks Protection Officers was considered but rejected on the grounds that a number of different types of serious incidents in parks and open spaces could not be addressed unless the officers had attestation powers.

Cabinet:

1.            Authorised the permanent members of the Parks Protection Team to be attested and secure the same powers as police officers, but only to be exercised within the boundaries of Havering’s parks and open spaces.

2.            Authorised the permanent members of the Parks Protection Team to use batons but only in self-defence and in relation to dealing with dangerous animals. 

3.         Authorised the Parks Protection team to develop new partnership arrangements with the police service so that the more serious incidents which might occur in parks and open spaces were more effectively dealt with.

4.         Agreed to receive a progress report once the attestation powers had been in place for a 12 month period.