OFFENDERS & POLICE “MUCK IN” TO HELP PRESTON CHARITY
12 Jan 2010
Lancashire Probation Trust has teamed up with Lancashire Constabulary’s mounted unit to do some recycling with a difference. Offenders on Community Payback are using poo provided by police horses as manure to help establish a vegetable garden at Preston charity Deafway.
The offenders have cleared a patch of very overgrown land over the past six months to make way for the garden to be established. The horse manure will provide nutrients for the soil to help the plants to grow. Now it is almost finished, the residents of Deafway – a charity that supports Deaf adults – will be planting and maintaining the garden as part of their activities programme.
Lancashire Probation’s Community Payback Practice Manager Sandra Wilson said:
“Offenders on Community Payback do a lot of work to help charities but we’ve never done anything quite this unusual – or smelly – before! It is a really worthwhile project for the offenders to work though as the resulting garden will help the charity provide a therapeutic pastime for the residents at the centre.
“Community Payback is just one of the sentences that can be made as part of a Community Order but it’s also the most visible and the one which benefits local communities the most.”
Mark Tierney, Activities Coordinator for Deafway said: “Having the offenders on site to prepare the garden has been hugely beneficial – our residents were not capable of completing the manual work needed so without community payback it wouldn’t have been completed. The results are fantastic; the residents will be working with a gardener to grow vegetables that they’ll also get to eat when they are provided to the centre’s kitchen.”
Sergeant Christine Driver from Lancashire Constabulary’s Mounted Branch said, “We are happy to help and support the Lancashire Probation Service for the Community Payback scheme. We have 18 horses all of which produce their fair share of muck and we normally have to pay to have this removed so we are more than happy to let them take it away.”
The project is just one of many undertaken by offenders working as part of their court punishment on Community Payback. Last year, a total of over 40,000 hours were worked across Preston and Leyland by offenders unpaid for the benefit of local people and neighbourhoods. That’s an equivalent value of almost £¼ million at basic wage.
Anyone can suggest work projects for offenders to do - apply online at www.lancashireprobation.co.uk . All work schemes must be for public or charity/ non-profit community benefit.
