As summer comes, so do the weeds and now Brighton and Hove City Council is trying to find a way to keep weedkiller off the pavements.
Last year Brighton and Hove City Council reintroduced glyphosate – sold commercially as Roundup – after five years without the herbicide resulted in overgrown pavements.
This year the council is carrying out a small-scale trial to compare a three-times-a-year chemical treatment and a three-times-a-year manual weeding.
The reason behind the trial in an unidentified city suburb is to work out a way to potentially phase out glyphosate as councillors from all parties promised in 2019.
Cabinet member for net zero and environmental services, Labour councillor Tim Rowkins said: “There’s lots of people who are continuing to campaign for us to not use glyphosate, which I’m totally on board with.
“But what we absolutely cannot do is just stop using glyphosate and not have a plan again, because two or three years down the line, we’ll be back to where we started.
“I’m really keen to find what if there is if there is a way to manage weeds on a wider area or across the city without using glyphosate.
“We need to really demonstrate that it works, that it’s good enough and that it’s going to stay on top of the problems so we don’t to go back.”
Councillor Rowkins believes returning to glyphosate turned the tide on what had become a hot topic in councillors’ in boxes and even the national press.
He said: “There were obviously places last year that were borderline impassable.
“If we rewind back to 2023, depending on which ward you represent it was one of the most talked about subjects in our in boxes.
“It varies, obviously greatly depending on where you are in the city, but in some parts of the city it was really the hottest item on the agenda and that’s been completely reversed in in 2024.”
Last year the glyphosate was delivered through an oil-based medium directly onto the plants rather than sprayed across the wider pavement from the back of quadbikes.
A week or so after the treatment, council workers were able to clear the weeds more quickly than the manual removal which had been used in the previous five years.
Councillor Rowkins said: “In 2023, we had no viable weed management plan at all.
“In the second half of last year, we pretty much managed to double the amount we were doing, but we still only got round a third of the city streets once.
“You can infer from that that there were spots in the city that didn’t have any weeding done for possibly two years or more. There’s no surprise that it was in such a such a dire situation.
“We just couldn’t allow that situation to continue.”
Once the weeds are dead the teams are able to sweep up the remains much more quickly than manual removal.
As part of the work carried out last year, the contractor gave streets scores to the severity of weed growth which has allowed the council to take 72 streets out of the programme as they need less attention.
Councllor Rowkins said the information has informed the planning for this year’s treatment on a “granular” level.
Streets which need fewer treatments tend to have higher footfall, whereas most of the issues with weeds were in very residential areas where fewer people are walking around.
This year the council is offering communities the chance to opt out of the three-times-a-year controlled droplet application if they team up and hand remove unwelcome plantlife themselves.
Councillor Rowkins said: “We’re just giving them the choice and it’s really a direct response to people asking time and time again last year for an opt out scheme.
“For people that are concerned about glyphosate, if they if they’re telling us that they would rather deal with it manually themselves, then we want to have a system that enables them to do that.
“It’s just about trying to give people that are doing it for themselves that a bit of peace of mind.
“We want to be using it as little as possible so every bit helps if people are happy to get involved.
“I suppose the criticism is ‘this is the council’s job. This is what we pay the council tax for’.
“And that’s quite right, which is why we have the wider treatment programme in place so this is the supplementary element .”
Typing errors and a date from 2022 to 2024 have been adjusted in this story.
Bizarre decision to limit opting out of glyphosate treatment. Streets that suffer the fastest traffic and those with the most houses can’t apply to opt out.
Although, you could flip that logic and say it makes the most sense, since streets that suffer the fastest traffic and those with the most houses are the ones most at risk, and therefore, they must be treated.
Not sure of your logic, there. Why would fast traffic and many houses increase risks from pavement weeds?
More people mean more chances to be injuried, right?
Or flip back again – and more people in more populated streets to be concerned about their area being treated with toxic weedkiller, and worried about harmful impacts on wildlife. Plus more people to initiate street / community weeding initiatives.
A very fair and valid point as well Fletch!
If the council cleared the tree bases as well as the pavements they wouldn’t come back so quickly.
It is the wall barley seeds that are causing most of the problems.
This City looks an absolute mess in the summer.
The streets with the most foot traffic are less likely to need weeding because the footfall prevents the weeds growing because they’ll soon get crushed by feet and pram wheels etc.
It’s the streets that don’t have much foot fall that need the most spraying / weeding.
Agreed. The number of houses on a street does not necessarily relate to the footfall so limiting opting out to streets of less than 100 houses is as ridiculous as saying you won’t use a toxic chemical and then using one.
I’m in favour of a supplementary approach. I believe it provides communities with participants willing to undertake the excessive work required by manual methods and the option to opt-out while ensuring that those pathways and areas without such individuals can remain safe.
As has been said numerous times if there are no weeds then there is no need for the council to spray that pavement.
So if all those against spraying formed teams to de weed pavements then the solution is in their hands.
What on earth is all the fuss about. If you think that Glyphosate is dangerous then consider alcohol, a known carcinogen, cancer causing chemical that people ingest daily, or smoking, eg Weed, causes cancer, If you want to reduce the risk to people then ban both of these first.
Get your point – but smoking and alcohol are addictive and prohibition would likely create an underground market for them both which would be harder to regulate. If you ban glyphosate for similar health reasons it’s very unlikely to cause any significant underground black market for weedkiller 🙂
Get your broad point – there’s lots of things people do every day which is harmful, and they need greater attention too. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start with the easy things to fix – like weedkiller.
Even if the jury is out on whether it’s harmful or not – why should we take the risk. The council’s approach to reintroduce this stuff is bonkers imo.
“Come round the back in ten, I’ll *Roundup* something for ya.”
The mixed academia on the subject has been a reasonable argument since many of them were written on large-scale quantities of wide spray distribution, and the controlled droplet method logically mitigates a good proportion of risk as detailed. I find this approach to be pragmatic and tries to consider both sides with a balanced solution.
I’m reminded of a saying that a good negotiation is when both parties walk away equally unhappy. I think this applies particularly here.
Get the Community service lot to do it, there is never a shortage of workers.
And for a lot of tasks for that matter. It seemed to slow down loads since COVID lockdowns, be good to see that continue.
The staff who clear the weeds, whilst their efforts are valiant, they’re stuck using inappropriate equipment. Buy them some battery powered equipment and show them how to use it without damaging the pavement and you’ll have better value for money and thus a fairer comparison with the carcinogenic pesticide the old heads want sprayed just outside all our homes (it is carcinogenic and is toxic to many insects… Regardless of what the naysayer’s believe)
Strange – the EU says it’s safe, the US FDA says it’s safe, and the UK says it’s safe. Albeit it’s toxic to plants, otherwise it would not work.
Who is your source that says Glyphosate is carcinogenic and toxic to insects if used on pavements and gutters?
Wild goats. Simple, ecologically sound and cost effective.
Glyphosate is sprayed over every field where your food is grown and all of the soil is literally drenched in the stuff. All your food is full of glyphosate. I would be far more worried about that then a bit sprayed in the pavement cracks every so often.
So many other things us humans are doing are proven to harm humans and animals. Yet, predictably, we ignore those and pick on the proven safe chemical with it’s chemically sounding name.
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4676
If everyone who is physically able weeds the patch outside their own homes, then weedkiller will not be needed in those areas themselves.
The problem is, you have to agree and declare that you have asked everyone in your street and that they have consented to agree to no weedkillers and that they themselves (or a group of residents) will not only agree to undertake the work, but also to undertake health and safety training in order to do this. It is all on the Council website.
Too complicated to administer, so I will continue to keep my area outside my home weed free etc. which is all you can do really.