Northampton Street Pastors given Purple Flag gong at 10th anniversary bash
The group of church members, who venture out on Saturday nights offering help and support to revellers until 4am, celebrated their tenth anniversary on Saturday (November 17) and was awarded with their Purple Flag certificate by councillor Anna King.
Northampton's Street Pastors group was established in October 2009 and is made up of about 30 pastors from churches including Kingdom Life, St Giles, Mount Pleasant and the New Testament Church of God.
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Hide AdIn May this year Northampton town centre was given Purple Flag accreditation, which is comparable to ‘Green Flag’ for parks and ‘Blue Flag’ for beaches, by judges from the Association of Town and City Management (ATCM), who found Northampton to offer an ‘entertaining’, ‘diverse’, ‘safe’ and ‘enjoyable’ nightlife.
Street Pastors were one of the partners that helped to achieve this award.
Northampton Street Pastors coordinator Keith Holland-Delamere said: "Northampton Street Pastors are proud to be a part of a partnership with Northampton BID, Northampton Borough Council, Pub Watch venues, police and EMAS helping make nights out in Northampton safer.
"We are very happy to mark 10 years of serving the town we love and look forward to serving our town for the coming decade.
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Hide Ad"It was a nice surprise to receive the certificate in recognition of our contribution to this team effort."
Northampton is now one of more than 70 town and city centres in the UK and Ireland to be given a purple flag for providing a safe nightlife.
Councillor Anna King, cabinet member for community engagement and safety at Northampton Borough Council, congratulated the Street Pastors enthusiastically for 10 years of monumental work in Northampton, keeping citizens safe, and she was delighted to present the Purple Flag certificate to Street Pastors Richard Johnson and Keith Holland-Delamere.
Special guest that evening was Reverend Les Isaac, who founded Street Pastors in 2003.