Help- most effective way of getting local council to remove roadside weeds and maintain better in future

[Summergarden]

Our town used to be reasonably well maintained, but in the last few years it’s been sad to see the weeds growing almost waist high in some areas between the kerbside and road and it’s the same around a lot of traffic islands where pedestrian crossings are or just separating the two sides of the road. This is throughout the town, not just a few roads and the tall and fast spreading weeds honestly resemble a waste ground in some places.

When you live somewhere you become a bit blind to the current state of things and assume it is the same situation everywhere else, but having just returned from a fortnight away spent in two different parts of England, it’s brought the dire state of our local town into sharp contrast. In all the other towns and cities we drove in and around for day trips, weeds were either minimal or non existent. All I want is for our hometown to be looked after in the same way as all these other towns and cities.

I don’t want to be someone that moans and complains, but need to feel I’ve tried my best to get things improved. How can we complain about kids dropping litter and not caring for their environment when it looks such a mess to begin with? They can’t be expected to feel any sense of pride in their local area. I don’t have an issue with grass verges being left a bit longer to be cut for environmental reasons, but I’m not sure these kerbside and other weeds ever get removed and it might just be that they die back over winter when things look better then are allowed to grow unrestricted the rest of the year.

If anyone has campaigned to improve things in their local area I’d be grateful to hear which approaches were most successful please. I’ve never felt the need to complain before so am unsure whether to contact the local councillors, MP, write to the local paper or try something else.

If anyone can help suggest any good arguments to put forward to help persuade the council to take action that would be great too as I’m not very good at thinking of these things.

Many thanks in advance for any helpful suggestions.

Aren’t they pollinator friendly?

I lived in Switzerland and they left these areas grow wild on purpose. Manicured grass is not wildlife friendly.

DIY

Many councils simply don't have the money and have to prioritise.

Councils are broke, decades of austerity, borrowing and rising social care costs. There's no magic money tree.

Hahahaha.

A) lots of councils do this deliberately now for wildlife purposes
B) the real reason is because they can't afford to remove them but use the above as justification
C) see above. You do it yourself.

We have a local group that tidied up our small town. It’s a mess to be honest. They will die back in autumn and over winter. Councils have no money apparently but they can Pride wash trams and buses and pedestrian crossings and lampposts. Priorities.

Assuming it’s not areas that have been left deliberately wild, you need to organise a group of volunteers to do it.

Don’t want to be a party pooper but we had a little “no-man’s land” area by our flats, we were mostly worried about a huge tree. The local council said it came under Highways so the responsibility of county council. The county council nearly sent out a team of people on community service to clear the dank, rubbish-strewn area but not to touch the tree - then said it was too small to warrant a team being overseen for the day!

Assuming you are in England, you could paint little St George’s Cross flags on the leaves and the council will apparently come and remove them, according to the MailOnline (see also: potholes, filling in thereof).

'Rewilding' is the cost cutting council's friend.

They won’t do it - unless it’s proven to be a hazard. It’s an unnecessary expense nowadays when there’s so many other things the council has to pay for.

Would you happy for you council tax to increase to cover it?

Where I live we all take responsibility for weeding the outside of our properties. I also do next doors as they are not physically able to.

I get what people are saying about budgets etc. But how is it the case that so many other towns manage to keep on top of it?

Tbf, I haven’t shown any photos to evidence just how bad it is but it genuinely is so much worse than every other town and city I’ve compared it to so far.

Isn't it a deliberate strategy to rewild certain areas for wildlife. I quite like the natural look.

No, I’m pretty sure it’s not. I’ve no issues with grass verges being rewilded, no mow May etc, it’s the kerbs that are the issue here that I’ve not noticed anywhere else.

Some towns manage it better because they have different or less pressures on their budgets. I’m in a northern ex-mill town and a huge amount goes on our adult social care and housing requirements. We also have a large number of refugees (and I’m not complaining about that at all - they need to go somewhere). So, feeding, housing, and educating people (and we have more of those kinds of people than most) will obviously need to take priority. If there is an overspend issue in the priority areas, where do you think they’ll take the money from?

It's the same here, village in southwest. Residents have started spraying with herbicide then ten days later hoeing out the weeds.

That’s my afternoon sorted then.

Inner London borough and it’s the same here. Apparently it’s ‘environmentally friendly’ but I suspect cost cutting more.

The bigger issue is that it makes the streets looked uncared for, so littering has noticeably increased as well.

We live semi rurally, so lots of verges and hedges are left wild to be cut only twice a year.

BUT we do also have a little truck that comes round and sprays the kerb-sides twice a year to keep the weeds you are concerned about at bay. I thought everyone did.......

So, we have the best of both worlds. Leafy Surrey though, so wealthy area.

P.s. We have local groups who collect litter though, as a cut through we are plagued by speeding car louts who chuck everything out their windows as they drive by. So we do also self manage to some extent.

Local governments are primarily funded by local taxes and charges (council tax, business rates, parking fines etc) and the rest has to be applied for from central government. This means, depending on your area and demographic, there may not be the money to allocate to things like weed removal.

All local governments are obliged to publicise their spending so you can look this up or request this online, and you should be able to see if this has funding. Unfortunately things that are considered statutory services come first, these are services required by law. As such as road maintenance is statutory to some degree, a few weeds may not fall under that.

I would start by contacting your local council and by asking. They'll probably give you a detailed reason as to why the weeds are there.

I feel your pain! I weed the pavement and road outside of my house and neighbours. They had gotten to the point of ridiculous and look awful. Our town is full of weeds which have grown that much they resemble bushes. They have split tarmac and stick out onto the roads. They used to be pulled and treated. Not now. Our council is spending millions on a bloody cycle lane nobody wants or will use. Putting in miles of it causing road misery for everyone yet they up our tax contributions and basic services like weeds, pot holes, cleaning and bin collection are disgustingly. Spending money on the wrong things. We have been sent letters to keep our streets and neighbourhoods clean!

Pollinators need all the help they can get. As long as they’re not trip hazards or blocking a view, then leave. They’ll be annuals so will have disappeared by late Autumn.
Neat and tidy is not good for nature.

What you call weeds are habitat for wildlife. Really sad that you’d want that destroyed for the sake of “tidiness”. Litter on the other hand is abhorrent, but it’s the opposite of natural.

Great! Killing off loads of bees and other important invertebrates that we need!