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Most councils across the country continue to use toxic herbicides (weed killers) to manage plant growth on our pavements, road verges and gutters. Local communities are coming together to take matters into their own hands in order to protect the health of residents and wildlife. If your local council gives you the option you can set up a volunteer weeding group and opt out of the council’s spraying regime. Nick Tigg, a Town Councillor in Lewes, has worked through this process in his own community in order to opt out of East Sussex County Council’s highway management plans which included spraying weed killer in his neighbourhood each year. He has kindly written up some detailed guidelines below and hopes it inspires you to act where you live. These are his top tips!
1. Get an opt out scheme in place Firstly, work out which council is responsible for managing the streets in your neighbourhood, for example this may be a town, parish, district, borough, city or county council. Despite my town having its own council and falling under a district council, it is actually the county council that maintains our streets. Luckily, an opt-out scheme was already in place (I can provide details of our scheme if you need them). If your council does not yet have a scheme in place, you will first need to get in touch with the relevant councillors to get this set up.
Negotiate with your Council East Sussex County Council requested that 80% of the residents on our street sign on to opt out. We felt that this was too high and suggested it be changed to 60% instead – the council agreed. We also asked for an extended period of time in order to gather signatures and for some free green waste bins to be delivered, to which the council also agreed. We learned that it’s worth negotiating with the council, question what they tell you if it’s not suitable and, if necessary, ask to see any policies that they have in place to back up their requests.
But why do you need an opt out scheme? Surely, if you just do the weeding there will be nothing to spray? Wrong, the spraying is likely outsourced to a large maintenance company with an amount of glyphosate that needs to be used up in order to satisfy the contract. If you want to be absolutely sure that spraying will not take place, you need an opt-out scheme in place.
2. Recruit volunteers We found that you ideally need two ‘lead’ volunteers per street. These are the people who will be filling in forms, organising events and keeping track of progress. In addition, four to eight volunteer ‘weeders’ are generally needed per street (the length of your street will play a role here). Start with the people you know. If you’re reading this, you’re probably a lead volunteer so try to find one other proactive person that you can share responsibilities with moving forward. Think about how you’ll keep in touch with fellow volunteers. For example, is it worth setting up a dedicated Whatsapp group or will you keep an email list instead?
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Guidelines for setting up and running a Community Volunteer Weeding Group