Community Payback at World Horse Welfare (From Smallholder)

Community Payback at World Horse Welfare

8:40am Wednesday 17th August 2011 in Equine

Staff at one of World Horse Welfare’s Rescue and Rehoming Centres have been getting an unusual helping hand.

Groups of offenders have been carrying out ‘Community Payback’ at Penny Farm near Blackpool, Lancashire every Friday since March this year. The offenders, supervised by Lancashire Probation Trust, are completing tasks such as cutting the grass, painting and repairing fences, mending picnic tables and benches, as well as other general maintenance duties.

Community Payback is a sentence given by the courts to offenders to work in their local areas to make amends for their crimes. So far they have completed 156 hours of work for our charity.

Fran Williamson is Centre Manager at Penny Farm and said: “The offenders are always supervised and have been no trouble at all. Although we keep the centre very tidy, there have been plenty of jobs for them to do and they just get on and do it. It’s been a great opportunity to work together with the Probation Trust and we hope that the relationship will continue.”

Geri Byrne-Thompson, Assistant Chief Executive for Lancashire Probation Trust added: “Community Payback is a rigorous and demanding punishment which requires offenders to pay back to their community for the crimes they have committed. We are pleased to have the opportunity to carry out this work for a charity which does such valuable work, and I know the offenders gain a lot of knowledge about animal welfare by completing some of their sentence at Penny Farm.”