To receive questions in accordance with the provisions of Council Procedure Rules 12.2 and 12.4 which require a Member to give at least 3 working days’ notice, in writing, of the question to the Chief Executive.
Minutes:
The Mayor advised that three questions had been received by the Chief Executive in accordance with Council Procedure Rules. All three questions were from Councillor Pritchard to Councillor Brookes.
Councillor Pritchard asked:
We have a problem with grass and weeds growing on our roads and pavements, this has got considerably worse since we stopped using weed killers in the Lancaster district, and consequently the roots are causing damage to both our roads and pavements. The Council road sweeper is vital to clearing some of this from our roads, so I would like to know how often the roads are cleaned, particularly in the rural areas, although this is a distinct wide problem?
Councillor Brookes replied:
Before I deal with the question I just want to clarify the point made about the use of herbicide on roads and pavements. The City Council has stopped using glyphosate herbicide on its own land, except to deal with particularly problematic invasive species such as Japanese Knotweed. Roads and pavements belong to the County Council of course, and the City Council used to carry out weed treatment on the County Council’s behalf. We decided to stop doing this and return the responsibility back to the County Council at the end of 2019, partly because we didn’t want to use herbicide, and partly because we were only being paid a quarter of what it was costing to do the job.
So the County Council is now responsible for dealing with weeds on roads and pavements and, just to be clear, is using herbicide where it is carrying out treatment. In 2020, mostly due to the pandemic, County only managed to carry out reactive treatment of small areas in response to specific complaints. This year, after some difficulty letting contracts, County contractors did start planned treatment in some areas in the summer, and I’ve been told there was a second spray in October. County says that it has also continued to carry out reactive treatment following complaints. Nevertheless, there have been lots of complaints about street weeds and County has acknowledged that it needs to allocated a larger budget to increase the geographical coverage of planned treatment in 2022. In the meantime, the advice from County is to use the ‘Report it’ system on the County Council’s website to flag up areas that need treatment.
On to sweeping. The frequency of sweeper visits is based on intensity of use and housing density. Lancaster city centre and Morecambe town centre are swept daily, streets close the centres weekly, other urban streets are on a two weekly or three weekly schedule, suburban and rural areas are typically on a six-week schedule. The cleansing team is also out regularly emptying litter bins and can provide a reactive service to deal with specific cleansing incidents between sweeper visits – contact Customer Services for this.
One thing I should add is that there have been a number of times over the last eighteen months where it has been necessary to use cleansing team staff (including sweeper drivers) to fill absences in the bin collection crews to keep bin and recycling collections going. This is what the City Council chose to prioritise during the pandemic, and the teams managed to keep a full collection service going all the way through. This will have resulted in a reduced road sweeping services on occasions.
Councillor Pritchard asked:
At this time of year leaves are an issue, blocking drains this can lead to flooding, do we sweep the roads more often to prevent this?
Councillor Brookes replied:
The mechanical road sweeper schedules don’t change in the autumn, but what does happen is that other resources from cleansing and grounds maintenance are brought in to remove leaves as quickly as possible. The weather affects how long it takes leaves to fall, which means some years leaf clearance takes longer than others. When heavy rainfall events are forecast the focus is shifted to areas that are known to flood to try to reduce the risk. But the teams can’t be everywhere at once and leaves continue to fall between visits, of course. Where safe, residents can help by brushing or kicking leaves off gullies to allow them to drain.
Councillor Pritchard asked:
Could advance notice be given as to when the road sweeper is sweeping an area? Then an attempt made to help the sweeper be more affective, by reducing the parked cars.
Councillor Brookes replied:
In principle, yes. In parished areas officers would be more than happy to liaise with the parish council to provide a sweeping schedule. It would be great if this was promoted in parish newsletters asking people to remove parked cars so that road edges can be swept.
In urban areas this is more difficult to achieve due to housing density and the amount of on street parking. The County Council used to work with the City Council on Street Pride deep clean events, and suspend on street parking for a day to allow kerbs and gullies to be cleaned, but this arrangement stopped several years ago due to a lack of resources.