A NEW drive is being funded to launch more Neighbourhood Watch crime-fighting schemes across Torbay.

It marks the 25th anniversary of the first Neighbourhood Watch scheme locally.

Of those first schemes, run by 7,000 volunteers across the Bay, two are still being organised by the original co-ordinators.

The drive to sign up new members begins this month.

The first new scheme has been lined up for Coombe Lane, off Teignmouth Road in Torquay.

Mayor Gordon Oliver, a member of Devon and Cornwall police authority, backed the scheme.

He said: "Neighbourhood Watch is a very important voluntary organisation which plays a supportive role to the police.

"The service is undertaken with great care by residents and I applaud the great work being done by many thousands of local people."

Neighbourhood Watch organiser Eileen Deacon said: "We have been given £1,000 by the Devon Community Foundation, which comes out of the Police Property Fund.

"We have got more than 200 new signs and every new neighbourhood to sign up, subject to availability, will get two free signs and a box from the Home Office which includes property marker pens.

"It's about crime reduction but it's also about keeping your things safe.

"If you have valuable objects, particularly ones with a sentimental value, then it's good to mark them and you have more chance of the police being able to get them back to you if they are found.

"Identifying mass-produced items like laptops is impossible unless they are marked.

"At the moment, there are roughly 300 Neighbourhood Watch areas across Torbay with about 7,000 member households.

"Some of those will have lapsed. The police community support officers are trying to get around to all of these.

"If they re-start as a Neighbourbood Watch area, they will also get the new signs.

"A quarter of a century is a long time to be a co-ordinator, and yet there are people in the Bay who have been involved with Neighbourhood Watch since its inception.

"In 2011, long-service awards were given to Margaret Waterhouse and Douglas Carter.

"Neighbourhood Watch continues to flourish due in large part to our PCSOs who, work with us to start new schemes and renew lapsed ones.

"If anyone needs home security advice, they can ask their PCSO for help."