Angry outcry as 1,600 demand wardens stay

Thursday, 21 May 2009

By Mary McConnell

FURIOUS pensioners have presented petitions to the Prime Minister and the outgoing mayor of Barnet calling for a halt to the council’s controversial plan to scrap the borough’s sheltered housing wardens.

Scores of protesters made their views known to councillors attending a meeting at the Town Hall on Tuesday night.

A petition signed by 1,600 people was presented to mayor John Marshall by the group Barnet Community Campaign. Attendance at the meeting was by invitation only and police officers kept protesters outside the town hall.

On Monday, a group of residents from Kingsley Court, a sheltered home in Tayside Drive, Edgware, travelled to Westminster to hand in their own petition to Number 10.

Councillors have proposed scrapping on-site wardens at sheltered homes. A public consultation on the proposal ended on March 31. A decision on the wardens is due next month.

Wardens provide help to residents in emergencies and will check in on them each day. They are currently based at the homes between 9am and 5pm every weekday.

Under the proposals, this system would be replaced by a floating service whereby only the most vulnerable residents would be assisted.

Vicki Morris, from BCC, said: “I hope the councillors change their minds. If they listened to what people said in the consultation they’d have found the overwhelming majority are against the proposals.

“The wardens are so important; they create a community in the homes. They know all of the residents and so they know when something is wrong. All of the residents are comforted because they know the wardens are there if there are problems.

“Floating wardens wouldn’t be the same. They would be much harder to access because of time limits.”

David Young, a resident of Kingsley Court who took the petition to Number 10, added: “We desperately need our warden, who assists us with health issues, safety, security, and social needs, and enables us to live independent lives with dignity well beyond the time when we might otherwise be in care homes or hospitals.”

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