Council staff too scared to walk streets get free bus rides home

Staff in Southwark Council’s regeneration department in South London are ferried to the nearest train station every night after work to prevent them having to walk through a rough estate.

The first private hire bus pulls up at 4pm outside the council offices to take  workers the half-mile to Elephant and Castle Underground station.

Mean streets: Council workers refuse to walk in Southwark, south London

The half-hourly shuttle service continues – at £130 per day to the taxpayer – until the last workers are dropped off at the station at around 7pm.

A total of six journeys are made each day, at a cost of £650 a week, to ensure the workers do not have to cross the notorious Aylesbury Estate and risk being mugged.

The area is part of the constituency of Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, who caused controversy in April when she walked around nearby Peckham wearing a stab-proof vest.

Her decision to wear body armour came weeks after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she would not walk the streets of London at night.

Critics last night said the money spent on the shuttle buses should be spent on improving the safety of the area for its residents, who have no option but to walk or use local buses.

Eric Pickles, the Conservative local government spokesman, said: ‘One of the prime duties of any modern local authority is to make its area a place where people can walk safely and be proud to live.

'The money spent on this bus service would be better and more sensibly spent making the area safer for everyone, rather than just a few.’

The private bus service ferries staff across two of the country’s most dangerous areas, including the Camberwell and Peckham borough wards of Faraday and East Walworth, where the number of robberies is much higher than  the national average.

Yet the council workers could easily catch a scheduled bus – the 343 – from their desks at Chiltern House, which is a 15-minute walk away from the Tube station, just as Southwark Council advises its residents to do.

It urges residents ‘All Aboard the 343’ in its publication Southwark Life. In a two-page spread, residents say what appeals to them about the 343, including ‘Nathan’, who says: ‘It’s a great bus route for getting across Southwark.’

The regeneration department is also home to the council’s transport group, which in 2004 laid out its long-term transport strategy for Southwark – which included encouraging people to cycle, walk and use public transport.

A Southwark Council spokesman said: ‘We implemented the service in December 2005 after a series of violent attacks on staff. Three were mugged on their way home within a four-week period and the council decided to provide a secure, safe bus service.

‘At the same time we are working overtime to make the borough a safer place to live for our residents.’