• About
    • Ethics policy
    • Privacy Policy
    • Ownership, funding and corrections
    • Complaints procedure
    • Terms & Conditions
  • Contact
  • Support
  • Newsletter
Brighton and Hove News
29 September, 2023
  • News
    • Politics
    • Business
    • Opinion
    • Community
  • Arts and Culture
    • Music
    • Theatre
    • Food and Drink
  • Sport
    • Brighton and Hove Albion
    • Cricket
  • Newsletter
  • Public notices
  • Advertise
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Politics
    • Business
    • Opinion
    • Community
  • Arts and Culture
    • Music
    • Theatre
    • Food and Drink
  • Sport
    • Brighton and Hove Albion
    • Cricket
  • Newsletter
  • Public notices
  • Advertise
No Result
View All Result
Brighton and Hove News
No Result
View All Result
Home Brighton

It’s time to grasp the nettle as weeds overrun our city

by Frank le Duc
Tuesday 24 Aug, 2021 at 3:27PM
A A
18
It’s time to grasp the nettle as weeds overrun our city

Councillor Peter Atkinson

The story in the Sunday Times

You may have seen the BBC news report on the problem of pavement weeds throughout Brighton, Hove and Portslade.

The issue has also been covered by a number of national and local newspapers and websites, with jibes about rewilding the streets and the war of the weeds.

Some reports mentioned a petition. More than 200 people put their name to one on the Brighton and Hove City Council website a year ago. Since then, the situation has worsened.

The whole story has its roots in a decision taken by the council’s Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee in 2019.

I was a member of this committee until May of that year and the agreed position had been to reduce herbicide use to once a year while actively looking for an alternative.

This approach had also been adopted by a number of local councils up and down the country.

Unfortunately, this position was promptly overturned by members of the newly elected committee – and then, from November 2019, the use of herbicide was banned completely.

The results are now plain to see: a landscape that, in some areas, resembles a post-apocalyptic zombie-filled film set – or a scene from Day of the Triffids.

While I totally understand and support the desire to find alternatives to herbicides, it was reckless in the extreme to adopt a “no use” policy with nothing in its place.

Green councillor Jamie Lloyd spoke about manual removal – or pulling out weeds by hand – in the TV news report.

And the Cityclean teams do a sterling job but they are fighting an overwhelming and losing battle with weeds growing back within weeks of their removal.

Weeds near London Road railway station in Brighton

These weeds and pavement grass are a trip hazard – and not just to elderly people. I know of a local child who had a really nasty fall after tripping over an enormous clump.

They make pavements more slippery when wet and they pose a threat to dogs who get barley grass stuck in their paws.

There is also the long-term damage that these weeds will do the very fabric of our pavements.

Lastly, it is simply laughable for the council to say that these weeds are good for insects and bees – but most of them are not attractive to these types of creatures.

Besides, there are much better and more effective ways to attract and support our insect wildlife than letting weeds run riot all across the city.

Peter Atkinson is an independent councillor and represents North Portslade on Brighton and Hove City Council.

ShareTweetShareSendSendShare

Comments 18

  1. Jonathan Simons says:
    2 years ago

    Conveniently forgetting that it was your administration and party, when you were part of it, that made the decision so you can’t really wash your hands of it like this. And didn’t you pledge at the last election to do it?

    Reply
  2. Nathan Adler says:
    2 years ago

    Another classic idea, (along with the OSR cycle lane), from Cllr Pissadoru. Some pavements are a disgrace and once again Brighton and Hove City Council is the laughing stock of the UK. No more apologies the council need to get on top of it.

    Reply
  3. Jean says:
    2 years ago

    Green, Labour and Tory Councillors signed a pledge as part of a campaign by the Pesticide Action Network. They promised to phase out herbicides containing glyphosate, but were supposed to find genuine alternatives to what many suspect is a cancer-causing chemical. The first bit was easy, but typical of our Councillors, they haven’t followed through.

    Reply
  4. Chris says:
    2 years ago

    It’s not just pavements either, central reservations and grass verges are so overgrown it must be difficult to see round some of them when emerging from a junction. The speed camera in Coldean Lane is barely visible for the bushes around it and the one in the Lewes Road is being engulfed.

    Reply
  5. Malcolm says:
    2 years ago

    I love cllr Lloyd’s childlike worldview. Perhaps he and his Green colleagues could spend their weekends manually removing some weeds. I wouldn’t mind chipping in myself. . . Subject to receiving a council tax refund.

    Reply
    • Ben Doyle says:
      1 year ago

      Lol yet us residents are paying a high tax and high permits for what a town full of weed

      Reply
  6. June Churchill says:
    2 years ago

    My husband posted this somewhere else, it make sense
    Perhaps someone could give legal guidance on the following!
    Are the pavements, footways and public spaces the property of the government, East Sussex County Council or Brighton and Hove City Council or do they belong to the owners of the properties adjacent to these areas? If it happens to be Brighton and Hove City Council then the unsightly weeds causing slip and trip hazards growing in these areas are the property of the said authority. As I am a Health and Safety Consultant I am fully aware that it is the responsibility of an owner of such areas to not only carry out their common law duty of protecting everyone from harm but to have a written Risk Assessment identifying hazards and the degree of risks and the production of safe working procedures to mitigate such hazards and risks.
    If so a demand to the council should make this Risk Assessment public. If one is not forthcoming to show why the situation to protect those that required hospital treatment after tripping on weeds was not in place should a prosecution be undertaken?
    It perhaps means that the weeds are the property of the council and as they have admitted that they do not have enough staff to deal with the problem we could help them.
    Perhaps if we gathered the weeds from outside our houses and public areas and left them in bags outside the council offices it would be easier for them to load them onto vehicles for disposal at their recycling sites where garden waste is turned into compost and fertiliser.
    After all they are encouraging us to do our bit for the city so this is what we could be doing!
    Of course our actions could be classed as guerilla gardening so leave us open to civil charges of charges of trespass if these areas are not ours!
    Comments welcome!

    Reply
  7. Jon says:
    2 years ago

    Why don’t people clear weeds in front of their houses instead of taking pictures of them or writing columns in the local paper.
    It takes 5 minutes . The Tories ran their Clean for the Queen campaign claiming it was the patriotic thing to do. We have regular volunteer beach-cleans
    Here’s a Labour councillor who seems to want to live in a Nanny State which will result in the council employing agency workers on zero-hour contacts and Minimum wage to clean his street.

    Reply
    • mart Burt says:
      1 year ago

      Jon
      I have a dog but I don’t bark myself when someone taps on the door.
      I buy bus and train tickets, yet I don’t drive have to drive them.
      I order stuff for delivery but I don’t have to collect it.

      I’m sure people do keep their own area tidy but we pay council taxes for people to do such works as this.
      Who the council employ is entirely up to them. You do know that ‘agency workers’ work for an agency. What arrangements those ‘agency workers’ have is between the worker and the agency and is no business of yours or mine in the whole scheme of things.

      Reply
  8. Simon F says:
    2 years ago

    Something has gone seriously wrong in our Environment Transport and Sustainability committee. It’s a bit like telling little children that if they eat up all their vegetables then they can have some sweets afterwards. All the kids hear is that they can have sweets. The kids in this scenario are replaced by Cllrs Lloyd and Heley, and their stooge civil servants who have been told that we will abolish the use of herbicides if an alternative can be found. What these cretins choose to hear is just the bit about abolishing herbicides. The difficult bit about organising an alternative is forgotten about. Later they try to claim that the weeds are actually stopping global warming or some such asinine nonsense.

    Reply
  9. Billy Short says:
    2 years ago

    The common theme with this council is they don’t seem capable of anticipating the consequences of their actions. The ideology and dogma don’t seem to allow for any complex or nuanced situation which needs a longer term solution.

    As a result, no policy is thought through. And in this case it’s like they’ve watched two David Attenborough programs, and decided that pesticides must go because they come up on the eco-warrior wish list.

    In their minds it’s about ‘sustainability’ – when it’s clearly not.

    As an allotment holder who attempts to be organic I too am totally against the use of pesticides, but you can’t then just let things go. If I don’t weed manually then nature takes over and, far from encouraging wildlife, I lose all my vegetables to snails and then I don’t eat.
    Rewilding our streets – as with my allotment or any garden – is not sustainable. It’s a short term failure to act that results in longer term consequences.

    So this is quite simple: If you take one thing away, then you have to replace it with another. If we can’t spray weeds with chemicals, that’s just fine, but we then need more street cleaners to weed and scrape the gullies before the drains get blocked. Using a strimmer is not the green answer either.

    Instead, we have the most stupid fake green argument – that ‘weeds are nice’, and you can almost hear our juvenile councillors with hands over their ears going “not listening, not listening…”

    Reply
  10. Natalie Downes says:
    2 years ago

    So right, Nathan that women Cllr Pissadoru caused a lot of trouble with her making changes… no thought to residents and bad planning, she made these decisions but without an alternative. Can’t believe Labour has accepted her back after she was suspended for antisemitism …totally shocking.

    Reply
  11. CK says:
    2 years ago

    We need to protect our beautiful city. The nature. The sea. It’s why so many of us folk sold out flats in polluted London and bought beautiful houses by the healing sea on the best city in the UK.

    Reply
  12. chris says:
    2 years ago

    The long and short of it is that glyphosphate weedkiller is very effective and saves a lot of money. There is no alternative chemical that works as well and has no negative effect. So that leaves manual intervention such as weeding or burning. This needs people, and this costs more. So councillors, spend more. If this means reducing other budgets then do so. Allowing the weeds to grow will only result in more damage and more cost in the long term. And that is before the lawsuits begin from people who have suffered injury due to the weeds.

    Reply
  13. Jim says:
    2 years ago

    If I trip over a weed, or someone crashes into my car because they can’t see at a junction, litigation will follow to the council. This is to prove a point as clearly the only thing the greens understand is when they are faced with court action.

    This nonsense will damage the gutters (more cost to us tax payers) so when the rain comes at the end of next month, expect to see flash flooding in Hove and low areas of Brighton.

    I genuinely feel sorry for the people at the bottom, city clean. who have to deal with incompetent decisions from the councillors. They take the flack for poor leadership and underfunding. From over grown weeds due to this nonsense ban through to the beach being covered in litter because the funding isn’t there to empty the bins efficiently.

    I might out out with some weedkiller later, my road is like loving in some weird zombie movie.

    What do we get as a response from the council, blaming someone else for the consequences of bad ideas or some dribble about it being good for insects. They need to make a law for councillors to be held account for dangerous desicions.

    Greens = shambles

    Anyone reading who’s annoyed about this, either Spray the weeds yourself or rip them up and dump them in front of Hove Town Hall, may get the point across.

    Reply
  14. James Goddard says:
    2 years ago

    Maybe they can sort out the garden recycling bin fiasco.
    Why is there a two year waiting list for a bin that we pay for?

    Reply
  15. Robbo says:
    2 years ago

    Can we get rid of the green weeds please! They are also growing in our street drains!

    Reply
  16. Jason says:
    2 years ago

    The Madeira Drive arches are left to fall down. Nothing was done to preserve the West pier. Roads and pavements are breaking up due to a lack of maintenance, and all we get are stupid vanity projects such as unwanted cycle lanes, the doughnut-on-a-stick (the eyesore 360) and all those propellers on sticks off-shore that will be abandoned as a danger to shipping for centuries to come when they reach the end of their useful life in a couple of decades.

    I always believed a council’s primary duty was to maintain the town (yes, I know – it’s called a “city” now) in a livable condition and to preserve it’s ancient heritage.

    Silly me. All they really do is cut services while lining their own pockets.

    Councillor Atkinson needs to look round his own area at overgrown turning areas and impassable pavements where the hedgerows grow right across the footpath and into the road.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Most read

Brazen bike thief steals £3.5k ebike as witnesses take pictures

Electric charging spots to be removed because they would block hearses

£1k a month garden cabin rental provokes outrage

Council books further £2.5m loss on Brighton i360 debt

Council faces £70m budget gap

Top music awards go to Bjork, Wet Leg and … a Brighton record shop

It’s time to grasp the nettle as weeds overrun our city

Football match-day guest parking permits look likely to be scrapped

Prankster artists swap snaps of Brighton tourist traps for housing estates

Is this your giant husky?

Arts and Culture

  • All
  • Music
  • Theatre
  • Food and Drink
Helen McCookerybook & James McCallum to bring The Chefs to Woodingdean

Helen McCookerybook & James McCallum to bring The Chefs to Woodingdean

28 September 2023
It’s certainly not the ‘End Of World’ for PiL

It’s certainly not the ‘End Of World’ for PiL

28 September 2023
‘Run Like Hell’ it’s Peter And The Test Tube Babies

‘Run Like Hell’ it’s Peter And The Test Tube Babies

27 September 2023
Green Door Store’s ‘2 3 4 Fest’ a resounding success! (Part Two)

Green Door Store’s ‘2 3 4 Fest’ a resounding success! (Part Two)

27 September 2023
Load More

Sport

  • All
  • Brighton and Hove Albion
  • Cricket

Sussex scent victory after a dominant day at Hove

by Will Symons
28 September 2023
0

Sussex - 202 and 505-7 (declared) Gloucestershire - 195 and 113-5 Sussex have victory in their sights after a commanding...

Manager of Brighton and Hove Albion’s women team dismissed after allegations

Albion ease out of Carabao Cup with Europa and Premier League taking precedence

by Tim Hodges
27 September 2023
0

Brighton and Hove Albion are out of the Carabao League cup after a goal from Nicholas Jackson settled the tie....

Carabao Cup Round 3 – Chelsea v Brighton and Hove Albion

Carabao Cup Round 3 – Chelsea v Brighton and Hove Albion

by Tim Hodges
27 September 2023
0

Brighton and Hove Albion go to Stamford Bridge for their first League Cup game of the season. Chelsea entered the...

Sussex come up short against Middlesex in County Championship

Sussex bat their way into a strong position on day two

by Will Symons
27 September 2023
0

Sussex 202 and 256-3 Gloucestershire 195 Classy fifties from Tom Clark, Ali Orr and James Coles put Sussex in a...

Load More
August 2021
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  
« Jul   Sep »
ADVERTISEMENT
  • About
  • Contact
  • Support
  • Newsletter
  • Privacy
  • Complaints
  • Ownership, funding and corrections
  • Ethics
  • T&C

© 2023 Brighton and Hove News

No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Opinion
  • Arts and Culture
    • Music
    • Theatre
  • Sport
    • Cricket
  • Public notices
  • Advertise
  • About
  • Contact

© 2023 Brighton and Hove News

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.