SWINDON Street Reps is looking for new volunteers who are passionate about their community.

The organisation, which has groups of in different areas of Swindon, is now looking to start up in the Parks area.

There are already active Street Reps groups in Penhill, Toothill, The Railway Village and Stratton.

Nick Brock, housing participation officer for Swindon Borough Council who runs the Street Reps said: “We’re always looking for anyone who wants to get involved with us, and launching in the Walcot and Parks area would probably be the natural next step.

“We’ve had an interest expressed from someone and so that is something we would pursue if a few more people wanted to get on board,” he said.

The Street Reps is a group of individuals who are committed to making a difference in their community. Started in 2015 by Swindon Borough Council as a way to engage tenants and local residences in better communication with the council, the role has grown to encompass a wide range of activities.

“A Street Rep is basically someone who is a good neighbour,” said Nick.

“They’re like a community champion who wants to do good, positive work in the area they live. It’s about caring about the environment, caring about the community and community spirit, and actively getting involved to make a nicer, safer, better place to live,” he said.

The volunteers take part in litter picking, reporting repairs or lighting issues in their street, helping to running the community cafes and organising the annual Playing Out event.

Anyone over18 can join one of the adult groups and there is no specific time commitment.

“One of the reasons I think it’s been quite successful,” said Nick, “is that people can do what they want, when they want to and in a way that suits them.

“So if you’re interested in doing something on a Monday but that’s all you can manage, that’s fine. It may be a specific issue that interests you and you want to be involved in during that time and then you might not want to do anything for a bit.

“We don’t demand a time commitment. We are also just very interested in getting people’s views about what we do and how we do it. So even if that commitment is sharing their views about the services we run and how we manage that, that’s useful to us because we want to get things right and that’s useful to us,” Nick added.

Anyone under the age of 18 can join the Junior Reps which is a Swindon wide group.

“We support all our reps with training,” added Nick. “For example to run the community cafes we pay for the reps to get their qualifications in food hygiene. If we had people in the community who have a focus and we could support that focus with some training then we would do that.

“Being a Street Rep is good for the council, good for the community and good for the individual,” Nick said.

For more information or to become a Street Rep contact Nick on 07881281845 or nbrock@swindon.gov.uk

You can also find the Street Reps on Facebook at facebook.com/groups/882784311835254.