THE role of community safety wardens across East Cleveland is to be reassessed.

Over the last ten years, 41 wardens have been based across the borough to deal with minor incidents of anti-social behaviour and to keep neighbourhoods neat and tidy.

However, this week a councillor described how he had heard of incidences where wardens were performing tasks better suited to police and paramedics.

The comments, made at a meeting of Redcar and Cleveland Council's executive committee on Tuesday, have resulted in a meeting with the wardens being arranged to discuss their role.

A special meeting with the team of wardens has now been set up by the council, which is their employer.

News of the meeeting was revealed during an impromptu discussion on the role of the wardens at the council's executive committee meeting, where proposals to employ them as car park barrier operators were raised.

Dave McLuckie, lead council member for community safety, told the council there was no chance wardens would accept such a proposal.

He said: "It's not the job of wardens to operate barriers and it won't be done by them.

"The wardens have become victims of their own success. The job is expecting more and more of them.

"They end up in vans going from place to place and that's when they appear like policemen, but they are not acting as quasi-policemen at all. That is not what they are there for.

"We receive good reports from the public about the wardens but their role must not be diluted."

Cllr Keith Pudney said that in a recent meeting with community wardens he had heard there had been instances where the wardens had been used as escorts for maintenance workers on troubled estates, that in one instance in Eston police had left wardens to deal with a potentially dangerous situation and that they had been used to administer first aid, despite having no medical training.

He said: "There has been at least one occasion where they felt abandoned and feared for their own safety. We should make it clear to all concerned what they are there for."

The council is to hold a meeting with the wardens to discuss their role in the new year.