HOMELESS people, drug users and ex-offenders are queuing up to take part in a radical rehabilitation scheme, which has been hailed as central to the York Pride campaign.

PACY, the partnership of Arclight, Commercial Services and York Association for Care and Resettlement of Offenders (YACRO), was launched last July.

The groundbreaking police-backed project sees gangs of volunteers carrying out supervised work in the community. It has proved such a success that waiting lists have had to be drawn up.

Projects which PACY has already worked on have been praised by City of York Council's commercial services boss David Finnegan. He said: "The true success of PACY is the fact that there is a waiting list of people to work in the gangs. These volunteers have achieved significant improvements in the quality of York's street scene and they are establishing themselves as key players in showing York Pride."

York Pride is a major, city-wide campaign to clean up and improve York's appearance.

The £34,000 costs of the pilot scheme were met by North Yorkshire Police and Safer York Partnership, with both groups set to approve a further two years funding.

Schemes PACY gangs have been involved with include making over the roundabout at Clifton Moor and clearing overgrown areas along many pathways in the city. They also took part in a project to clean up the Memorial Gardens, in Leeman Road.

Volunteers receive no payments other than expenses, but can work towards qualifications such as NVQ and use PACY as a springboard back to full-time work.

Council leader Steve Galloway said the council was delighted with the scheme's success.

He said it was encouraging to hear that some PACY workers had volunteered to work, without expenses, over and above their allocated shifts.

"To hear of that level of camaraderie developing is excellent," Coun Galloway said.

Jeremy Jones, project leader at the Arclight Centre for the homeless, said: "PACY's success is entirely due to the participants' positive response to the opportunity to start turning their lives around and their determination to confound the majority of people's perception of the homeless and marginalised.

"The waiting lists to join the scheme are a demonstration of its popularity and the work that the scheme has undertaken on behalf of the city is proof that it is possible for community to meet community, to everyone's benefit.

"This ground-breaking initiative, which has no parallel anywhere else in the country, is something of which York can be proud."

Updated: 10:37 Monday, March 29, 2004