Tackling the weeds on our pavements

We are aware that some residents are concerned about the amount of pavement weeds at the moment, as well as long grass on verges in some areas.  

We’re sorry about this – and we wanted to update you about the problems we’re facing and what we are trying to do to improve things. 

The council ended the use of Glyphosate for weedkilling on hard surfaces in 2019 with cross-party agreement. It was made clear at the time that this would result in more visible weeds.  

But there are definitely more weeds on pavements than we’d like there to be at the moment. 

The key problem we’re facing is difficulties recruiting enough staff to keep on top of these issues. 

We started our seasonal recruitment in January this year and have carried out open days and other initiatives.  

Unfortunately, we have only managed to recruit nine of the 26 seasonal staff we would normally take on to deal with the increased amount of weeding needed during the spring and summer months.  

As many of our seasonal staff used to come from European countries for the summer, the ability of European nationals to work in the UK after Brexit, alongside the pandemic, is continuing to have an impact on our recruitment. 

All our street cleaning staff who work on foot rounds are also weeding when they can. 

We are also having difficulty getting the equipment we would like to improve the efficiency of weed removal. We have equipment on order that was due to be with us weeks ago but has been delayed.  

This includes a small vehicle that can remove pavement weeds and which is due to arrive in August.  

We recently managed to buy four industrial low vibration strimmers, and more are due to arrive at the end of June.  Off the shelf domestic strimmers are not suitable for staff who are using them for extended periods and are not powerful enough. 

We’re also taking the following steps: 

  • Employing two teams of contractors to focus on weed removal
  • Setting up contractors to remove excess growth and weed around tree bases. We hope this will start in the next two weeks
  • We have also instructed contractors to assist with verge cutting
  • We have ordered brushes to adapt one of our sweepers for larger pavement areas – this should be in action by the end of June
  • We are looking at a range of options to improve our chances of recruitment
  • We are offering overtime to any operational staff in CEM to focus on weeding
  • We will be promoting voluntary and community group weeding and provide advice, tools and support.  

We are sorry for any problems residents are experiencing. But we would like to assure you that we are doing all we can to try to get back on top of the issue and will continue to push hard on it. 

Please visit our jobs webpage if you would like to know more about seasonal work for the council.