At any one time, the Probation Service has a few hundred people (mostly young men) on Community Payback – repaying their debt to society by doing useful, properly supervised, work around the community.

The Probation Service are happy for anyone to suggest work for them to do, typically clearing litter, clearing vegetation or painting and decorating.  They’re not in the business of taking work away from other people, so they won’t normally do work that someone else would otherwise be paid to do.

At the moment this can work well, but it can hit problems too.  There needs to be toilet facilities somewhere nearby (no, they can’t pee in the bushes – that’s against the law!).  There also needs to be someone to take away the rubbish – something that can be worked out on an ad-hoc basis but we want it working every time without any problems or hold-ups.

So here’s what we’re doing

• there are quite a few places across Cheadle & Gatley that could do with more cleaning so we’ve compiled a list for the Probation Service and we’ll continue to add to it.  We’d like community payback to come in a few times a year and tidy up.  (If you want to know which areas are worst for litter, you can do worse than trace lines from The Kingsway, or any other High School, unfortunately).
• we’re working behind the scenes to smooth the process as far as we can, which means better joined-up working between the Council and the Probation Service to make everything work properly.

Please let us know of any specific locations you think would benefit from a regular clean-up.

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