Send in the street pastors

Martin Surl, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Gloucestershire, has been buying flipflops. Hundreds of them. Not for the police, but for a local Christian volunteer team of ‘street pastors’. Earlier this year, Surl announced a £40,000 grant to cover the group’s training and resources. ‘Some things are better delivered by people who aren’t the police,’ he says.

What street pastors deliver is hard to sum up in a few words. When I first encountered them a couple of years ago in their uniform of baseball caps and blue jackets, both with ‘STREET PASTOR’ printed across them, I thought they were going to ask me whether I was saved. But street pastors are not street preachers. They are, instead, a friendly presence — ‘non-judgmental’ is a word they often use — who offer help to anyone who needs it. They do ‘everything you can think of’, says Surl. ‘If you have a young girl there who’s drunk too much, they will look after her.’