At the last Council meeting I asked how many staff were in the community protection group. The CPG is the group within the council tasked with enforcing things like dog fouling, littering and some parking offences such as parking on the zig zag lines outside a school.

There are 54 staff in the CPG. There are 21 wards so that makes just over 2.5 staff per ward. The Safer neighbourhood team in High Barnet have 9 staff who could be enforcing these powers. When I asked how many of the CPG staff were street based the number goes down even further because the CPG staffing includes CCTV operators, admin and technical staff. This means that the Council has effectively no staff in High Barnet who are capable of enforcing these laws. Even if they did the Council does not possess the means to issue penalty tickets for these offences. In other words much of the minor but ant-social activities that take place in High Barnet are not in any way controlled. The police who have the resources are not allowed to because the council has reserved the powers for itself. This urgently needs review if we are to have any sanction against the small minority of people who act in an anti-social manner.