A NEW pilot project, being run by the Devon and Cornwall Police, called ‘Community Unity’, could see Holsworthy join together to take care of more incidents themselves.

The town council was approached recently with the option of the new pilot scheme and discussed it during the full council meeting on Wednesday, March 5.

Town clerk Vanessa Saunders told councillors they had been approached in Holsworthy because the town was deemed the ‘best area for a pilot scheme due to its remoteness’.

She said: “This is a pilot project that they want to set up in Holsworthy if we agree to it. Basically they will draw people from local groups, like the WI, the Scouts, Red Cross etc — from whatever groups in our area they think will fit — to create a response team who will be able to deal with local issues. Funding will also be available for any equipment needed for the project.

“The issues they hope the new Community Unity group would take care of are things like a fallen tree, flooding, individuals in crisis, that sort of thing. There would also be special training available for things like cyber security.”

Ms Saunders explained that as time went on it would be more likely Holsworthy would have to take care of certain issues themselves anyway — giving the example of snow. Due to the remoteness of Holsworthy they may have to deal with any issues of being snowed in themselves if aid is unable to reach them.

She added: “My first thought was ‘here we go Devon County Council are giving us more work to do’, but actually it doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me when you consider in the end we are rural and will probably need to start doing these things anyway — it would be a good idea maybe to have a team ready in case of this eventuality?”

Deputy mayor Pat Smith said: “Some of the things they talk about us taking on we do already.”

Ms Saunders explained that more information about what the project entails will be provided at a later date and that this was brought up only to see if the council thought it would benefit Holsworthy.

Mayor Jon Hutchings said: “I think there is no point us not getting involved. When it comes to community clean ups we have always struggled to recruit for those, this sounds to me like the perfect group to go to first to draw volunteers from for those types of projects — I assume.”

The council agreed they thought it was worth looking in to. Ms Saunders said the decision would have to go through the finance and general purposes (F&GP) committee before a decision was reached.