A WEST Swindon councillor has expressed concern about changes to park services in the town.

Coun Nick Martin (Con, Shaw and Nine Elms) is worried there are only four rangers for the whole borough after two recent departures, one of whom was head ranger.

He said: “I would have to be a bit concerned about that. The four guys who are rangers can’t even support the litter picking. These parks are used by thousands of people every weekend.”

The town remains without a head ranger after the council’s parks department was abolished in February and some staff were moved into other departments or to Swindon Commercial Services.

The changes aimed to save £600,000 from the Streetsmart Budget and were part of the council’s Stronger Together strategy, which restructures services to make them more efficient.

“We are looking to SCS to develop roles to provide the outcomes we want,” said Coun Martin.

“I’m disappointed the change is happening rather slowly,”

The Streetsmart department, including rangers, parks teams, street cleansing, highways and waste, was moved to SCS in February and their roles consolidated into three main jobs: Community liaison officers, area supervisors and combined services managers.

But, after talks with workers in the past two weeks, this plan has been torn-up and rewritten with more of the original roles being carried over to SCS instead of being merged into ‘one size fits all’ posts.

Though there have been 28 new jobs created within the service, there will be 13 redundancies, although these people will potentially be redeployed elsewhere in SCS.

Andrew Sims, the director of SCS, said: “The SCS reorganisation is wide ranging and covers all areas of our activities including the ranger service.

“It is about improving the services we provide to our clients and customers.

“It is really important we get it right for the long term benefit of our customers and we also have to consult fully with all those that are affected by the changes.”