Northampton Guardians trialling more week night patrols for students
The volunteer group say they've been asked to help support students on nights out on Wednesdays.
A volunteer group keeping people safe on nights out in Northampton say they've stepped up patrols to support new University of Northampton students.
It follows calls from venues in the town, for more support from Northampton Guardians on Wednesday's student nights.
The volunteer group have helping people get home safe on weekend nights out since they launched in 2021. They were set up after the tragic events of 2016 that lead to the murder of India Chipchase.
Northampton Guardians work in partnership with the OPFCC, Northamptonshire Police, East Midlands Ambulance Service, Northampton Street Pastors along with local venues with the aim to ensure the safety of everyone within the night time economy.
Gill Goodship is one of their trustees:
"We've always supported any sort of extra events in the town like Freshers, but also other particular events. We've supported A level results night for example. We will always be out on that Thursday as well.
"But we have had feedback from the people with whom we work for, the door staff at the club saying that Wednesdays are very busy and a few people said to us, we could have done with you being out."
Gill says as long as they have the volunteers they will trial having a team out on Wednesday too, saying even two people can make a big difference:
"Wednesday night is the the big sort of student night generally throughout the year and particularly for Freshers as well. We do go into the university during the year for their open days as well. So we talked to prospective students and their parents about what we do."
Following the group sharing an incident on social media, about how they helped a lone female last Saturday night, Gill says they've seen a big increase in people contacting them about volunteering:
"She said that she was waiting for taxi. She wasn't too keen on us staying with her, but we did keep a a close eye on her. We then noticed then that she she walked off and and went to walk down Bridge Street.
"So we went after her and our two Guardians found that she was actually getting into a car with four males, and we established that she didn't know who the males were, so we stopped that happening, brought her back to the Sno van and got her safely into a taxi."
Gill says they currently have 15 regular volunteers but after they shared the story they've had interest from 30 more people.
They group are now running taster sessions for those people who have got in touch.