Anger at £4,000 paid to wardens
Aberdeen council hire private traffic wardens
Published:
FOUR private traffic wardens from Manchester have been brought in to Aberdeen at a cost of £4,000-a-week, it was revealed today.
The move sparked outrage – only a day after the cash-strapped Aberdeen City Council extended warden hours to catch rogue parkers at night.
The local authority has hired the temporary parking patrollers from NCP to fill vacancies in its own ranks.
Unions said the four new workers from England should be found from the Aberdeen area.
As reported in later editions of yesterday’s Evening Express, parking wardens will now patrol late at night every day of the week – previously the hours had been 7am to 7pm.
It aims to catch people who park dangerously on double yellow lines late at night.
The new staff from Manchester, three men and a woman, have been put up in a flat in the Fountainhall area and are expected to stay for three months.
Labour councillor Jim Hunter said: “The council has brought itself into disrepute by hiring wardens from Manchester. The big problem I have is their costs, which we understand will be in excess of £1,000 a week each.”
Parking patrollers are due to merge with environmental and community wardens to form the City Warden team.
But council officials say it has put more pressure on staffing, and it has hired the new agency staff as a stop-gap measure.
There are currently 12 vacancies for parking patrollers with the council. The wardens cost the council about £25,000 per year.
The council has said the move was a not a permanent measure. But unions – who have already launched a formal dispute over the plans to switch to city wardens – have hit out at the move.
Regional organiser for the Unite T&G union Tommy Campbell said: “This is an outrage. It is a completely scandalous misuse of council taxpayers money.”
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