OKEHAMPTON Hamlets Parish Council is to consider continuing to fund marshals at its moorland beauty spots in the parish next year â?? after reporting a success with the scheme over the summer.

The parish council arranged and paid for the Dartmoor Marshal Scheme run by the national park authority to be extended to the council-owned Old Town Park, Meldon Woods and the area around Meldon Reservoir.

Early indications are that the scheme â?? whereby marshals discourage anti-social behaviour such as litter picking, lighting fires and inappropriate camping â?? has worked well. It will continue into early autumn, as there are still plenty of visitors around, and the parish council will then consider whether to bring the scheme back again next summer.

Hamlets parish clerk Jane Gillard said: ’The council were aware of the scheme the national park authority had introduced to marshal key spots within Dartmoor and thought the Meldon area could benefit from that as well, so with the NPA’s support and assistance, we were able to link into the scheme and extend it to areas wthin our parish.’

She explained that there had long been a problem with littering, particularly in Meldon Woods.

’Rather than us going out to try and recruit security people ourselves, it made much more sense to link into their existing scheme,’ she said. ’Meldon Woods and the Old Town Park weren’t part of the original scheme last year but with Covid and the increase of visitor numbers last year, the council felt this was something that would be helpful. The marshals have been covering Old Town Park, Meldon Reservoir and Meldon Woods, which the council owns and manages.

’It isn’t policing as such; it is more helping the visitors get the most from the area and the most from their visit while making sure people park where they are supposed to be parking and not where they shouldn’t be. And making sure they are camping in the allocated sites and not camping where they shouldn’t be,’ she said. ’The feedback from the wardens has been positive so far.’

’Once the trial finishes later this month the council will review the feedback and decide whether it is something that is worth continuing with.’

The scheme was originally run last summer by the Dartmoor National Park Authority with funding from the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner, the Forestry Commission and Natural England, after rangers were left clearing up behind a swarm of badly behaved visitors in the Bellever Forest area who left behind mountains of litter and human faeces when the first lockdown ended in June last year.

The new marshals worked with the rangers at honeypot sites across the moor, and feedback from locals, landowners and visitors was so positive that the scheme continued this summer.

The marshals were particularly useful in helping the rangers cover the shift from early afternoon into the evenings. It has duly continued this summer as visitors began to head westwards to enjoy Devon and Cornwall with the easing of the third lockdown. The Meldon area is popular with visitors exploring the more remote northern part of the moor.