Alex Ginnins, National Probation Service supervisor, at work on painting over graffiti in Granville Street Picture Ref: 77686-154SWINDON town centre is on its way to becoming a cleaner safer place.

The first of two empowerment days saw police, street wardens and litter pickers all helping to make the town centre a better place to be.

And the organisers hope the event which continues today is just the start.

Oliver O'Dell, town centre development manager, thought the first of the two days had gone well. "It was a good day," he said.

"For something I wanted to start small and develop, it was bigger and more high profile than I thought it would be.

"Hopefully is will become a regular event and we can get more local people involved. We are going to try to do these events maybe twice a year.

"I think it was a good way to do it. If we had just had one lot of people, like the police, it would have been hard for people to tell what was happening.

"But because we had everyone involved people saw the police, then the street wardens, then people cleaning up graffiti. It was very high visibility."

One of the first events of the day saw graffiti being painted over.

Thomas Cook in Havelock Street provided the paint so the graffiti on its shop could be cleaned off and in the coming weeks Envy, Greggs and Blacks will also benefit from the new arrangement.

"They have done a brilliant job," said Mr O'Dell.

"We are going to send them certificates."

There were eight police officers and two police community support officers in the town yesterday, stopping and giving fines to people who were cycling through pedestrian areas.

And there were warnings of fines for people dropping litter in the town centre.

The council now has the power to issue £50 fines to litter louts but is still deciding whether it is going to introduce the measure so was handing out warnings as a way to gauge public opinion.

The Brunel Centre was also involved in the event and had repainted railings in Wharf Green, helping to tidy up the area.

Shoppers were also being given postcards which asked them to say what annoyed them most about the town centre for example, graffiti, litter, fly-posting, chewing gum or town centre crime and to rate the town out of five for cleanliness, security, shopping and entertainment and town centre events.

Mr O'Dell said he expected to have up to 900 of the cards returned by the end of today, which will give the council more information.

The authority will follow up the empowerment days on June 12 to 15 by cleaning chewing gum off the pavements in Canal Walk.

Isabel Field