Town hall to be hub for services

3:57pm Thursday 6th December 2007

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POLICE and a new team of neighbourhood workers are moving into Darwen Town Hall as part of a scheme to make it a hub of town services.

Blackburn with Darwen Council's neighbourhood team and the police officers who work with them are moving in to the hall today and will share an office on the first floor.

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Age Concern moved into the town hall earlier this week and will be followed in the new year by the Citizens' Advice Bureau.

The police will work with the shared neighbourhood team, made up of council officers, who can work in partnership on problems such as anti-social behaviour and truancy.

Together they will work alongside local coun-cillors, residents and other partners to tackle crime and community safety.

The Lancashire Teleg-raph's We're Backing Darwen campaign has called for more services to be brought into the town and for more work to be done to revitalise the area.

Coun Salim Lorgat, executive member for housing and neigh-bourhoods, said: "Putting the council, the police and its full range of partners together provides a much more effective way of improving our neigh-bourhoods."

Insp Mark Thackeray-Scott, who has overall responsibility for the police in the Darwen and rural area said: "Working more closely with partners in the council has proven extremely successful in improving our neigh-bourhoods.

"The range of responses we can now use to tackle community issues has grown significantly.

"It is much more than enforcement, it's about partnership working, applying the right resp-onse for a particular issue in each area.

"This could be about education, awareness raising, improvements to the environment or working with community groups.

"Crime figures keep falling and this move will only strengthen that."

Ideas to take the existing public toilets out of the town hall and replace them with shops have also surfaced in the plan to regenerate Darwen Town Hall.

This would return the building to how it originally looked. Coun Simon Hugill said: "There are plans to move the toilets to the market annexe so a shop can be put in the front of the town hall and footfall will increase in the annexe."

Coun Alan Cottam, executive member for regeneration, said: "This idea is at a very early stage and there are no firm proposals or costs available.

"It is one of many ideas being considered to continue the regeneration of Darwen town centre.

"We would not take out the toilets before replacements were commissioned within the planned development."