Local wardens are to be renamed “community officers,” in order to salvage their bad reputation with the public and to emphasise the service which they rendered to the community on a daily basis, Local Government Parliamentary Secretary Silvio Parnis told parliament on Monday.

He called for an end to a culture where “everybody does whatever they like,” and spoke of the need for local wardens to be offered the same respect as police officers.

Speaking during the debate on the reform of the Local Enforcement Act - which will see the service moved to the government agency from the private provider which has been running it for years - Mr Parnis defended the bill as being “more than just a name change”. But Opposition Whip Robert Cutajar accused it of being just that, quipping “What’s in a name?”

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The LESA system was failing, Mr Cutajar said, and its powers should not have been taken away from local councils in the first place. He called for increased enforcement, especially with regard to the environment, and mentioned the concerns of wardens who had been instructed to avoid patrolling certain areas of the community.

Opposition MP Karl Gouder agreed with Mr Cutajar, arguing that local councils knew the needs of their communities best. In light of this, he said, local councils should be given power over enforcement in their localities, and they should be given sufficient funding and resources to become a one-stop-shop.