Two Brighton roads have been treated with weedkiller by mistake, Brighton and Hove City Council said, despite residents choosing to take part in a community manual weeding programme.
The council said that Harrington Villas and Hertford Road were treated in error at the end of last month. The admission follows residents’ complaints.
People in Harrington Villas, Brighton, had only just received their weeding equipment from the council when contractors were seen applying chemicals in their street on Friday 30 May.
Enough volunteers had signed up to enable the road, off Preston Drove, to apply to opt out on Tuesday 22 April.
The treatment of weeds with herbicide in Hertford Road stopped after a few yards, the council said.
Green councillor Kerry Pickett, who represents Preston Park ward, has asked the council for a list of roads that have opted out of treatment with glyphosate – sold commercially as Roundup.
She said that two other streets in the ward, where residents did not want to be identified, had also been treated with glyphosate.
Green party councillors have described the opt-out scheme as “shambolic”.
Councillor Pickett said: “People have been severely let down by Labour’s failures in implementing this much-requested opt-out scheme, which already came a year too late.
“Residents have gone through the effort of collecting signatures and organising volunteers in return for a promise that their streets won’t be sprayed with toxic chemicals. To then break this promise is a huge betrayal of trust.”
The council said that 42 streets had joined the opt-out scheme which was started in February. A map of the streets is available above.
The streets are York Avenue, Worcester Villas, Wolstonbury Road, West Hill Place, Walsingham Road, Uplands Road, Tillstone Street, Sussex Square, Surrenden Close, St Peter’s Road, Southdown Avenue, Rugby Road, Reigate Road, Redvers Road, Prinsep Road, Prince Regent’s Close, Peel Road, Orchard Gardens, Old Farm Road, North Road, Monk Close, Modena Road, Major Close, Leicester Villas, Lancaster Road, Hythe Road, Howard Place, Hollingbury Rise, Hertford Road, Harrington Villas, Friar Road, Friar Crescent, Ferndale Road, Edburton Avenue, Clifton Street, Cleveland Road, Chester Terrace, Carlisle Road, Buckingham Road, Beechwood Close, Ashurst Road and Alpine Road.
Labour councillor Tim Rowkins, the council’s cabinet member for net zero and environmental services, said: “We’re really pleased to have excluded more than 1,000 roads from treatment this year, including 42 as part of the resident opt-out scheme.
“It’s fantastic so many people are keen to volunteer to clear pavements in their local community and is something the council has been delighted to support.
“There are a small number of roads that tried to opt out but were unsuccessful due to the criteria or the deadline.
“Treatment is only applied to visible growth though so residents still have the option to keep their own street clear.
“We are aware of concerns that two roads which opted out were treated or partially treated and we’ve put in place steps to make sure it doesn’t happen in the future. We are continually looking to learn and improve from experience.
“I’d like to apologise to the residents of those streets, particularly the volunteers who have given up their time to weed their area and keep their street clear and accessible for all.”
Before the council secured cross-party support to stop using glyphosate in 2019, workers used to spray the weedkiller along pavements from the back of quadbikes.
The new regime, introduced last year, involves suspending the chemical in oil and applying it directly to pavement weeds in a method that is less indiscriminate.
I cannot believe that this filthy poisonous ROUNDUP is not banned. Wake up Brighton the council are spraying this on streets where our children and animals are playing and walking. Please get in touch with pesticide action network UK. All pesticides can be inhaled, they mess with our hormones changing our genes so the next generation can inherit any of the diseases they cause . They are implemented in cancer especially. Prostate and breast and Brain . These filthy killers even mess with our unborn. The younger you are the more vulnerable. I do not know if they still spray in our parks and school playing fields like they have been doing. They are in our water on our fruit and veg. Please join the fight to get them banned forever. In one year , China had 48,000 poisonings.
Please can you supply the source of this scaremongering misinformation? I wouldn’t think that Pesticide Action Network UK would spout the inaccurate rubbish you’ve posted.
The UK, the EU, and the US state Glyphosate is safe if usage instructions are followed and there is no link with cancer.
It’s legal to buy and use in the UK and it is only “poisonous” to plants.
Please could you explain what you meant by Glyphosate being “filthy”?
And are you the same lady that complained to the press that lambing experiences in the area were “disgusting”?
There have been multiple successful legal cases in the US.
As of May 2025, Monsanto (who produce Roundup) has reached settlement agreements in nearly 100,000 Roundup lawsuits, paying approximately $11 billion. This article here has some more background, including references to legal cases which residents can look into further if they like: https://www.lawsuit-information-center.com/roundup-lawsuit.html#settlement
The cases were in courts where juries decided whether Monsanto was liable. There was no expert involvement from scientists.
But anyway, the UK, the EU and the US now state there is no link to cancers, so please stop trying to spread malicious rumours.
In France, the Netherlands and Belgium, glyphosate is banned for household use.
Germany, the home of chemicals giant Bayer which bought Monsanto in 2018, has banned it in public spaces and plans a total ban at the end of this year.
It’s you BertY that is the sewer of misinformation
Seems Glyphosate is not banned in Germany – seems our friend “Taylor” might be from PAN UK and spreading more misinformation https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/german-cabinet-approves-restricted-use-herbicide-glyphosate-2024-04-24/
Just as many people fear that diet drinks using aspartame or similar sugar substitutes cause cancer. I don’t see a mass scramble to take these off the streets or Brighton supermarkets. We live in a world where misinformation and conspiracy theories spread very quickly – mostly without basis. I’d rather trust the science which, at the moment, has given glyphisohate a clean bill of health – certainly in terms of causing cancer in humans.
At least in the quantities we’d see used in the street.
Valerie, take your meds and go have a lie down.
It is not being sprayed all over the place. It’s applied directly to the weeds.
And as has been said multiple times if people don’t want this used on their street they can remove the weeks themselves. You don’t need special permission or council provided tools to do that.
Over exaggerating doesn’t help anyone.
The claims you make fail at the first hurdle. Glyphosphate – the main ingredient in roundup is a herbicide not a pesticide. You need to appreciate the difference. Herbicides kill plants and pesticides kill bugs. Roundup is approved in practically every major country including those in the EU and there is no firm evidence it is harmful.
Let’s just deal in facts rather than emotions. The council loves all the scaremongering as it reduces their costs in not having to treat the opted out streets – meanwhile residents take on a task they have already paid for in their taxes. Only in Brighton!
No. Pesticides is a generic term for things that kill pests – things harmful to humans, pets, livestock, crops etc. Pesticides include herbicides, insecticides, rodenticides, fungicides, acaricides etc.
Partially correct, but Glyphosate is a herbicide harmless to everything except plants if instructions are followed.
Yes, only in Brighton (& Hove) would people believe Labour’s manifesto promise not to use glyphosate.
For completeness, it was former Green councillor, Tom Druitt, that got PAN UK to present to the council and convince them to introduce a pesticide ban. The original aim was to reduce spraying to once per year and stop when a practical alternative was found.
As part of the secret Labour-Green coalition spraying was halted entirely leading to pavements and gutters being overgrown with weeds and causing trip hazards – especially for the elderly and those with poor sight. As a result spraying recommenced as the manual removal by council operatives just didn’t work.
This was very embarrassing for PAN UK, having their home town going back to spraying weeds, so they got Sian Berry to try to raise this as a Private Members Bill to Parliament in October. We will have to wait and see what happens. See https://sianberry.org.uk/2025/01/09/brighton-pavilion-mp-wins-cross-party-support-for-national-pesticide-ban/
As an aside another former Green councillor, Amy Heley, joined PAN UK as a Public Affairs and Media Manager.
Isn’t scheduled for second reading until October.
This has zero chance of being passed.
Even Bills introduced via the ballot have little chance to pass let alone one introduced outside that process.
It’s amusing the way Green voters convince themselves they are so much better people than Reform voters.
Yet they both spout demonstrably untrue nonsense they saw on a meme.
It must be exhausting living life in such a state of hysteria all the time.
It’s exhausting being balanced, I can tell you that much.
Valerie (and others) please calm down, there is absolutely zero evidence that this weedkiller is harmful to anything but weeds. To the council I say well done, to residents of this so called opt out scheme I say get weeding, maybe tonight.
Top tip: pour a kettle of boiling water on weeds outside your house. This will kill them / limit their growth. And is neither an effort to hoe or bad for the environment.
there is an environmental cost to pouring boiling water on the pavement. You’ll need a few kettles to cover the area outside your house. Each one will have a carbon cost to treat the water to your tap and then a cost (gas) to produce the electricity to boil the kettle. Chemicals have a cost too. There is no option which doesn’t have a financial or environmental cost
And don’t forget all the insects and wildlife killed by using boiling water, flame guns, and by mechanical means such as hoes. Glyphosate just kills the plants and leaves the creatures unhalmed.
Also, Oxygen has a 100% kill rate.
We know that people have been injured from trips on pavements overgrown with weeds. We also know of others (less mobile through age or condition) who have stayed at home or who have had to pay for taxis. We need pavements to be clear for people to use them. Yes, there is a small risk from chemicals (but the UK, EU and USA have approved their use). There is (I submit) a far larger risk in not using them, from injuries to people, as we’ve seen locally.
I would hope that groups like PAN could develop a more effective alternative method. Trial it, prove all is OK and then introduce. Instead, Labour/Greens introduced without evidence and then mismanaged manual weeding, which proved that chemicals were needed.