Villages 'left behind' by street safety team

A street safety team should patrol outlying areas of a town so all residents reap the benefits from the money spent on the scheme, a councillor has said.

Street Safe was introduced by Rotherham Council in November with £570,000 of funding to tackle anti-social behaviour on high streets and support the police.

At a meeting earlier this week, Conservative councillor Joshua Bacon claimed villages not covered by the patrols were "feeling left behind" and "seeing no benefit to their council tax in this regard".

Council leader Chris Read said the team focused on areas residents had flagged as a priority but a wider roll-out would be considered in the future, if resources allowed.

Patrols began in November 2025 across Rotherham, Wath, Swinton, Dinnington and Maltby, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

A progress report showed officers had delivered 50 enforcement interventions, including formal warnings, fixed penalty notices and statutory notices. This averaged out at around one every four days.

They had also assisted in arrests for drug offences, and had helped to escalate a high-risk domestic abuse case to relevant support service intervention.

Speaking at the local authority's scrutiny meeting, Bacon questioned why the team was "solely allocated to principal towns".

"I think if you're going to have them, you'd surely have them go further in other areas," he said.

"A lot of these villages that are outside of the principal towns are feeling left behind.

"What would be your message to those villagers who are seeing no benefit to their council tax in this regard?"

Responding, Read said the council was "dealing with a limited amount of money" and as such, such focus on "the things most residents have told us is their priority."

"I am conscious that there are other high streets, like Parkgate for example, where we might want to make bigger investments because its a main shopping parade," he added.

"If in the future we have more resources and we're able to roll that out more widely, then I'm absolutely open to a conversation about that, whether that rolls into places like Todwick or elsewhere."

Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North