Taxi Driver Online

A seasonal scheme to reduce alcohol-fuelled disorder in Falkirk town centre is to be made permanent.

Falkirk Council said its taxi marshalling project, which operated during the festive period in 2007 and 2008, will run for the next 12 months.

The initiative, which involves marshals patrolling the town centre and taxi queues at night, has been credited with reducing crime by 23%.

Assaults and breaches of the peace also fell by 50% during the same period.

The scheme, which is supported by Central Scotland Police, will see four marshals and an area supervisor employed to patrol potential trouble spots during weekends.

Falkirk Council said that 92% of club-goers asked about the initiative said they felt safer with marshals around.

Fiona Campbell, head of the authority's policy and performance review, said: "The results speak for themselves and we are very pleased to be able to continue this highly successful project over the next year."

The review board also agreed funding to pursue a project aimed at researching the causes of conflict involving young people in the area as well as a restorative justice scheme to challenge those involved in antisocial behaviour.

I think more councils should follow suit and it might stop things like this happening http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8046220.stm

Taxi marshall's are a good idea imo, as long as funding from them isn't put on us, after all the clubs feed them full of beer at high prices, let them fund it, I'm sure £150 for the night isn't going to dent the 30k they made that night fleecing ppl.

This is use of by the police and the council of designated taxi resources to have cheap policing - this is an abuse of public money.

Down here they have them directing traffic and manning road barriers to stop cars going up certain roads, which is police work, so why are taxi Marshall's being misused.

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if you cannot be yourself, then who can you be.

I think it's great that funding has been found.

Shame most other councils can't do likewise.

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IDFIMH

Why are these people called taxi marshalls when they are actually drunk marshalls.

Put it this way, they need lessons in the job, they slow it down and don't marshall the public hard enough, if there's both a queue of ppl and a queue of taxis at the same time it shows things aren't working, ppl who have to do the look at me thing at the front of the queue should be pushed back and the punter behind allowed to go instead, soon sort out all the messing about that goes on.

The way things are going in Bristol at the moment the only work the mashalls will have to do on a weekend is keeping the drivers from killing one another