Each morning at 9am, a team of coronavirus wardens meets at Sutton Civic Centre to get their instructions for the day before donning their hi-vis gear and heading off in pairs around the borough.

Sutton Council was allocated £86,000 by the government to employ wardens to enforce coronavirus restrictions – they have employed eight new ‘stay safe champions’.

Every day the wardens can walk around five miles and in pairs cover a different patch of the borough each day – this includes the borough’s parks, as well as town centres like Sutton and Cheam.

Walking around for a full day can be tiring and Waseem Raja says that people appreciating the work they do means a lot.

He recalls a cafe owner offering them a hot drink on a particularly cold day and saying thank you for getting people to follow the Covid rules.

But every day is different and telling people what to do isn’t always easy.

Waseem says his worst experience in the job was just last week when he was confronted by a group of teenagers who refused to wear masks when entering a shop.

He said: “This was the most difficult thing to happen so far, they tried to be rude but we told them in a polite and gentle way, you must wear a mask.”

Your Local Guardian: Sutton stay safe champions. Credit: Tara O'Connor

Credit: Tara O'Connor

Waseem tells us that when he started back in October, they spent a lot of time asking gatherings of people in parks, including Beddington Park, to break up or keep more distance from one another.

He said: “After the second lockdown it has been a little bit more complicated.

“I noticed that there were more people in the High Street rather than in the parks.

“After the shops opened, outside Primark there was a very big queue, a huge crowd, I approached the manager to ask her about it  she said ‘we’ve been trying since the morning but people aren’t listening’.”

The wardens can’t actually enforce the rules, they just issue guidance. But if they identify persistent rule breakers this can be passed on to the council’s regulatory services.

Fellow stay safe champion Rizwan Zafar says the job is most difficult on cold and rainy days, which there has been no shortage of in recent weeks.

The job also involves checking that businesses are following the rules.

Rizwan said: “Mostly people and shops have mostly been following the rules.

“Normally very few people aren’t following the rules, most people know what to do.

Your Local Guardian: Sutton High Street. Credit: Tara O'Connor

Credit: Tara O'Connor

“I think being outside in nature is a nice part of the job and we are doing something to prevent the spread of Covid.”

Now, with confusion around the Christmas rules the wardens are prepared for their work to be cut out for them.

Waseem added: “We will see what happens over Christmas – we don’t know if people are going to behave themselves or going to be crazy.”

The stay safe champions are  on the streets in the daytime seven days a week, as well as on Friday and Saturday evenings.

Deputy leader at Sutton Council, Jayne McCoy, said: “With regulations changing all the time, the council wants to ensure everyone understands the current requirements. 

“Through their highly visible presence, our stay safe champions support, advise and help our residents and businesses throughout the borough’s high streets, district centres and parks, helping everyone to feel safe as they go about their business.”