Essex offenders completed over £1 million worth of labour for people in the county last year.

The facts emerged on Wednesday as bosses from Essex Probation Service took part in the world's first global conference on community justice.

Hosted by the Association of Chief Police Officers, the three day conference in London, finished on Friday.

Lynne McKay, communications officer at Witham-based Essex Probation Service said there were over 1,500 offenders on probation in the county, 900 performing community service, over 1,000 doing a combination of both and more than 100 on prison licences.

In any one month there are over 300 groups of offenders working across Essex completing over 160,000 hours a year.

The communications officer said: 'The nature of the work would cost over £1 million in manual labour.

In Chelmsford offenders undertake a variety of work, adding up to about 2,000 hours a month.

Work includes gardening for pensioners, painting village halls, decorating and maintaining school buildings, cleaning and maintaining churchyards, conservation work, and collecting and delivering donated furniture to charities, including the children's hospice shops.

The average cost of keeping an offender in prison is £24,000 a year while the cost of a probation order is £1,750 and community service £1,500.

At Kings Road School, internal decorating is being carried out. Alan Shay, school head said: "I would like to say thanks to the whole bunch and congratulations on such a good job. They do work well and cause no disruption."

Riding For the Disabled proprietor Mrs Mary Mitchell has had community service workers helping over many years, six during the last three months. She commented: "They do a great job, and I don't know where we would be without them."

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.