Service Manager (Community Payback & Wood Operations) Neighbourhoods, Regeneration & Sustainability, Glasgow City Council
Neighbourhoods, Regeneration & Sustainability (NRS) continue to deliver unpaid work placements across the city to the benefit of local communities. The nomination process allows schools, nurseries, and community groups the opportunity to identify work sites and tasks, ensuring that unpaid work delivery is representative and responsive to the needs of people within the heart of our city’s neighbourhoods.
In 2023/24, the 207 jobs completed across Glasgow by unpaid work squads ranged from single day tasks such as supporting nurseries to clear broken play equipment and helping moving furniture for community group fêtes, to several weeks on site, hundreds of unpaid work client hours and several tonnes of waste removed making a real and visible difference to local areas. In 2023/24 there were 204,475 hours of unpaid work delivered across the city – 54,372 of those were carried out as personal placements.
Parks and recreational areas, as well as public footpaths were a key focus of the service this year with several locations identified and tasks such as the refurbishment of railings and children’s play park equipment, as well as general environmental enhancement work in the form of re-defining pathways and increasing sightlines through cutbacks of overgrown shrubbery, contributing to public reassurance.
Some example worksites included:
East – Hogganfield Playpark, Greenfield Park, Bonnybroom Nursery
South – Gowanbank Primary, Birgidale Community Centre, Arden Local Convenience Area
In the past year, the service has provided over 11,000 individual placements with an attendance level of 94%.
Service user feedback when asked how carrying out unpaid work as part of a Community Sentence had impacted on them included:
“Although the work was repetitive and seemed to go on forever, getting praise from people walking past and seeing the finished job actually made me feel proud to have worked on it.”
“It was really good to do something that would benefit kids, made it worthwhile”.
“It was hard work, harder than I thought it would be when I first got my hours, I enjoyed being outside working, meant that the days went quicker.”
Nominee feedback on the positive impact unpaid work squads supporting their project included:
“The difference community payback has made for our growers counts in a couple of ways. They were able to achieve a task that our plot holders wouldn’t have been able to do, because they didn’t have either the skills, kit, or dexterity. The increased sunlight on the hedge side plots, means that the growing season should be vastly improved. As the hedge has been cut back, it will be much easier for our plot holders to keep on top of the maintenance going forward. Can’t thank your team enough!”
“I would like to thank you on behalf of our service for the planned and additional work you done for us. We had booked you in to remove our large planters from our nursery grounds. Your team done this very quickly and took all of the soil and old wood away which was greatly appreciated. Your team were very kind and pleasant and went the extra mile by moving our mud kitchen around to another space in our outdoor play area.”
“The team have done a great job. They were polite and well-mannered at all times. It has made a huge difference to the area.”
Overall, NRS provided 61,924 unpaid work hours in 2023/24 of which external squad placements made up 42,970 hours.
The remaining 18,954 hours of unpaid work delivered across the city were within the 3 wood workshops managed by NRS. Each workshop provides a static work base where Lighter Duties squad placements complete tasks such as memorial bench refurbishment to making planters and bird tables. These products are donated to local community groups, nurseries, and community gardens. In making products, clients are taught basic carpentry and joinery skills as well as paint finishing techniques.
In 2023/24 over 650 items were refurbished and over 300 items were manufactured and donated throughout the city.
Friends of Alexandra Park in the East of the city benefitted from the refurbishment of the park benches which line the pathway from the main entrance of the park. These weathered benches were brought back to life by unpaid work clients, sanding down to then coat with teak oil – a method that requires to be repeated several times over after each application to produce the best results.
Highlighting the benefit of unpaid work to local communities across Glasgow and increasing the visibility of this activity continues to be a key priority for the service and partners. The service continues to welcome nomination requests and is committed to positively impacting across Glasgow through community sentences into the year ahead and beyond.