A TEAM of 'grotbusters' is being drafted in to deal with environmental problems in three areas of the borough.

Trafford council has been successful in its bid to gain £127,000 Government funding for street wardens for the Lostock, Broomwood and Sale Moor areas.

The wardens' main role will be to provide a rapid response to environmental issues in these areas.

Each of the three areas will have its own street warden who will be provided with a motor scooter to travel around the estates and to allow the wardens to address problems quickly. There will also be a central rapid-response vehicle with a driver and operative to assist the street wardens in dealing with litter and other problems. All the areas involved have strong resident groups who are involved in neighbourhood management forums and have organised community "clean up" days.

The funding for the scheme will be provided on a similar basis to that for the existing neighbourhoood wardens scheme which currently provides five wardens in Old Trafford and five wardens in Partington. When the original scheme was set up, Trafford re-aligned several environ-mental services posts to provide three extra neigh-bourhood wardens in each of the Stretford, Urmston and Sale areas and four extra neighbourhood wardens for the Altrincham area.

The new wardens will link closely with Trafford's existing neighbourhood wardens, partners and resident groups to deal with other issues such as anti-social behaviour, van-dalism and noise nuisance. Training of the new wardens and management of the scheme will be along the same lines as that provided for the neighbourhood wardens.

Cllr Barry Brotherton, Traf-ford's cabinet member with responsibility for com-munity safety, says: "This is a great way to extend the good work that our neighbourhood war-dens are already doing.

"The new wardens will be concentrating on environ-mental issues but will also deal with social nuisance and other local problems where appropriate. Residents in the three areas involved in this project have already shown a great willingness to link with the council to improve their areas and this new initiative will help to cement those links."

The bid for funding was part of Trafford's response to the recent community strat-egy survey which indicated that many residents felt that litter and environmental prob-lems are an important issue. Geoff Marsh, head of envir-onmental services, said this week: "Once again we are listening to res-idents' concerns and addres-sing the issues that are raised.

"We are con-fident that this new initiative will great-ly improve the local environment for residents in the areas where the wardens will be working."