Street wardens hired to tackle Swindon's wave of street-drinking and shoplifting

• Watch Rob Murphy's report here.

Anti-social behaviour in Swindon has become so bad that a team of so-called citizen wardens has been hired to try to reduce crime in some areas of the town.

It comes as shopkeepers have complained of increasing levels of thefts as well as street-drinking and abuse over recent months.

The new team is equipped with body cameras and protective clothing.

They are not police officers and as such have no police powers which has lead to some asking if the scheme will make a difference.

One shop-worker, who asked not to be named, said: 'I've been in Swindon for 11 years, and this is the worst it's ever been.

"Today we've had five lots of shoplifting and two assaults. It's like using a bottle of water to put out a house fire.'

But the wardens said they have already seen a difference.

"I actually spoke to a few of the shops and they said it's having a positive effect, that if you say the members of public that are prolific attempting to shoplift, the numbers have drastically dropped,' said one of the wardens, Dan Naylor.

The team supervisor admitted Swindon had large problems. Andy Small told ITV News: "From working in other cities, I would say probably this is my biggest challenge.

"I can definitely see where the ASB (anti-social behaviour) and the drinking in the streets is a major issue, it's a massive difference compared to some of the other cities I've worked in."

Staff in two of the town centre's three Gregg's bakeries now wear body-worn video cameras to help log the large number of thefts.

The wardens have no powers, although they also wear body cameras to log situations.

Inspector David Tippetts of Wiltshire Police told ITV News: 'The Safe Streets wardens are really another element to policing. Another part of working in partnership to reduce that antisocial behaviour.

Cllr Jim Grant from Swindon Borough Council said: 'Ideally, we'd like the police to have the funding to have more police officers on the beat. But at the moment, all we all we can do is bid for pots of money to to address the issues facing us. And the pot of money that we were able to bid for was for safer street wardens.'

The system willl run for nine months and cost £142,000.