VOLUNTEERS who patrol a town centre at night offering binge drinking youngsters lollipops and advice on getting home safely are celebrating their two year anniversary.
The Uxbridge Street Angels, based at St Margarets Church, in Windsor Street, Uxbridge held a service to pay thanks on Friday evening to the teams success and dedication.
The team is making plans for next year, currently operating one night a week on Fridays, intending to cover two nights over the Olympic period, and are presently seeking 'Games Angels'.
June Hughman, town centre minister, said: "The Olympics is going to be huge. We have the Koreans staying at Brunel, and there will be outside police forces also staying there.
"The number of hotels there are locally mean there will be a huge number of visitors.
"The police have recommended to us that operating for two nights around this period will be most helpful.
"We had originally been looking to expand to Hayes or West Drayton, but police feel the best is for us to continue at the moment in Uxbridge."
Rabiah Aalam, project co-ordinator, said: "We had an incident where a man was lying on the floor drunk and suffering stomach pains. One of our angels helped him, and he e-mailed us the very next to say 'thank you for saving my life'."
The project also survived a possible glitch earlier in the year, when borough cuts threatened to undermine the safety of the volunteers.
Mrs Hughman said: "We were devastated earlier in the year when we found out the council were cutting back on their manned CCTV coverage. When we heard the news my heart sank. We used to continue until 4am but were forced to cut back until 1am.
"We have had meetings with the police, who have taught us how to carry out our own risk assessments. "This has been helpful, we are not so dependent on CCTV now.
"There is a range of people involved, from those in their early 20s to the over 70s, people who work in a pub, to shop assistants at Debenhams.
"One of the ladies has a daughter the same age as those who are usually out drinking, and she now says she won't go out on the nights her mum is on duty.
"We don't find it is necessarily students, most stay on campus at Brunel on a Friday night, those out drinking are either from around here or office staff on a night out.
"Our work really matters, recently there was a potential fight which looked like getting particularly nasty with big groups gatehring on both sides.
"To break the tension one of the street angels called, 'lollipops guys?' and they all stopped, and started joking about. It totally defused the situation, it almost seemed like they were looking for a way out, and we were glad to help."
