Multi-skilling CEOs Cornish crusaders The current situation with Covid-19 has seen communities and staff across the UK take on new and additional responsibilities to ensure their local communities are looked after. Cornwall Council was slightly ahead of the curve last summer when it trained some of its CEOs to take on extra duties to help the wider community. Zoe Hall, community and civil parking enforcement manager, explains more feel I have become part of the community, says Vince Elliot, one of Cornwalls multiskilled civil enforcement officers (CEOs). His colleague Kim Tyler-Woods agrees: I have built good relationships with the locals and the tourists, who often come back year after year. Elliot and Tyler-Woods took part in a pilot scheme last year where CEOs were upskilled to be able to perform other duties in addition to their parking roles. It came about partly as a result of a survey, which asked CEOs how many non-parking related questions they were asked each day. The answer was five, on average, ranging from where is the nearest bank through to the more unusual can you help me out of my wetsuit? I Ive engaged with residents and visitors to see what improvements could be made to make the whole area more enjoyable for everyone The survey confirmed two things: that our recent relaxation of the traditional uniform of a shirt and tie to a more informal polo shirt and cap or beanie was improving the approachability of our officers; and that our officers were dealing with a broad range of requests that go far beyond the scope of parking. Going the distance CEO Steve Lennon was based in St Ives, where he also monitored the towns dog control orders Cornwall is 100 miles long with 400 miles of coastline and 213 parish and town councils, serving a population of 536,000. We also welcome millions of visitors throughout the holiday periods. Thats a lot of extra vehicles, people and, increasingly, dogs. The councils environmental protection team has been facing capacity issues and ongoing budget cuts to frontline enforcement staff, with four dog wardens and 11 environmental crime enforcement officers covering the county. For more than 10 years, around 47 directly employed CEOs in Cornwall have been focused on parking contraventions for on-street restrictions and across the 250 council-run car parks. Some locations covered by the parking enforcement team can take the best part of an hour to reach especially in the summer before any monitoring or intervention can even take place. This is, of course, the same for other members of the councils staff who also need to carry out site inspections or respond to requests from the residents. With this in mind, we asked if it was the best use of resources to have uniformed CEOs only dealing with parking? Wouldnt it be more efficient if they could deal with some of these other issues? 22 britishparking.co.uk PN May20 pp22-23 Cornwall CEOs.indd 22 23/04/2020 13:00