Community Payback

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Types of Work Undertaken

• Indoor and outdoor.
• Examples of the low skilled work are: footpath edging, clearing leaves, clearing vegetation and planting bulbs and litter picking.
• Skilled work consisting of: building raised beds, painting and decorating, fencing projects and basic building works such as pointing walls.
• Currently doing work at a cemetery resetting damaged headstones and also alongside Nidderdale AONB replacing the dry stone walling.

General Information:

• The work is done with a supervisor who manages the team and works alongside the service users. The maximum size is 8 but generally the team is between 2-5.
• Offences range from fraud, drink driving and assaults. The service users are assessed as suitable to undertake community payback by the court teams. Generally this is first time offences and the age ranges from 18 up to 70.
• PPE such as gloves, high vis, steel toe capped boots and dust masks is provided. Risk assessments are put in place but recipients must have public liability insurance. Gardening tools also provided. If they are working on a painting job, the beneficiaries are expected to provide the brushes, fillers and sand paper etc.

Current Work in North Yorkshire

At the moment they work on a range of jobs with Northdale Horticulture, Cundall Church, Stonefall Cemetery, Ripon Cricket Club,  Nidderdale AONB, Great Ouseburn School and the park rangers for Harrogate Council. The villages that they are currently working with are; Alne Parish Council, Scruton Parish Council - and now Hampsthwaite Parish Council.

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Work Undertaken for Hampsthwaite Parish Council

Following a request from Joe Murphy, [Unpaid Work Placement Coordinator, Interserve (Justice) of The Humberside, Lincolnshire & North Yorkshire Community Rehabilitation Company Ltd.], via the Harrogate Probation Office, Hampsthwaite P.C. agreed at their January Mtg to engage with the scheme.

The Memorial Hall Management Committee agreed that the Hall can be used as a base location for work in the village generally. Monday was chosen as the working day because the Hall is unoccupied at this time.

Groups arrive 9.30am Monday and work until 3.00pm. Group size has varied between 8 and 2 and is most regularly 4 to 6

To date, there have been 3 beneficiaries of the scheme: Memorial Hall, Parish Council (village in general), St Thomas a’Becket church. Cost of materials required and refreshments provided are apportioned in accordance with the distribution of work done.

Future Work Plans:

• Painting bollards
• Tidying edges around Green
• Repairing, varnishing and painting, as required, seats and benches
• 'Spring Clean' inside the church
• Clearing Church yard edges and around graves
• Re-setting grave stones
• Re-polishing Church Room floor
• Clearing Medieval Way - inc. repairs to dry stone walls
• Repairing Feast Bridge
• Clearing edges of Feast Field
• Clearing Himalayan Balsam (in June)

There are also some minor tasks and repeat tasks (e.g. floor polishing). Most tasks are scheduled on a week by week basis and some are weather dependent. We are making requests for additional work and especially interior work (e.g. both churches, Memorial Hall, Village Room, Feast Cabins, Cricket Club).

Volunteers Needed

Our experience is that the Payback teams are well supervised, good humoured and excellent to work with - and the more we can work with them: the better the outcomes for the village.

So don’t hesitate to come and say hello when you see them working. Perhaps make them a cup of tea!

For all tasks, we appeal for volunteers (simply to drop in, guide, encourage and show appreciation mainly). All work needs provisionally to be planned and resourced in advance such that it is a available as a 'job ready to go'  whenever weather, group size and/or skills availability bring it to the fore. There are no labour costs but materials cost, including refreshments, need to be covered by the beneficiary. They are not allowed to do work on private amenities nor to do work which would normally be paid for.

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Community PayBack Progress Reports