THE North Area Council will sever ties with the enforcement agency responsible for reducing littering, dog fouling and illegal parking.
Kingdom Security, which has been employed to oversee clean-up operations in Darton East, Darton West, Old Town and St Helen’s wards since August 2014, will not have its £120,640-per-year contract renewed when it reaches its end on March 31.
Although a spokesman from Barnsley Council said the decision has been taken so the area council can ‘concentrate on its other priorities’, concerns over figures its four patrol officers were achieving have been made at recent meetings.
“The area council has been pleased with the performance of Kingdom but has taken the opportunity to review where it is investing the available budget for the area,” the council spokesman said.
“The decision to end the current contract with Kingdom was taken in order to allow the area council to concentrate on other priorities in the North area.
“This decision has no bearing on other area councils who each make their own commissioning decisions.”
Four other area councils in Barnsley - Central, Dearne, North East and South - still employ Kingdom to carry out the same services from their own budget.
Figures for the last quarter, which deal with statistics from July to September, show 224 fixed-penalty notices for littering were issued, seven were given for dog fouling and 78 parking charge notices were handed to motorists caught flouting restrictions, resulting in £3,975 in revenue being generated for that three-month period.
People caught littering jumped from 66 in July to 109 in September, although councillors failed to be persuaded and voiced their dissatisfaction at the service’s value for money at the last area council meeting on November 20, with just £51,700 being generated in 2015/16 financial year.
An update from 2017’s final quarter, from October to December, will be given at the area council’s next meeting on January 22.
Coun Dave Leech, chairman of the North Area Council, said: “We were pleased with Kingdom’s service initially but we decided against renewing the contract when it ends in March because we still have big problems with litter and dog fouling in particular.
“It’s a lot of money to spend on something you’re not completely happy with and we’ve done it for several years. We’re still in the same situation, so we agreed as an area council to end it ( the contract).
“We wish Kingdom well but we can use the money we were spending elsewhere. Other area councils employ them but many only have two officers and we had four. We couldn’t think about doing the same as four weren’t achieving the figures we expected.”
