weeds, weeds and more weeds

I have been going on about weed spraying not just in my blog but also to council officers and senior politicians. Last week I sent a pretty irritated email to Robert Aldridge and Mark Turley to convey my real annoyance at the situation in Granton.

Below is the response I received yesterday. I think it is a weak explanation, basically blaming everything and everyone including the rain, the weeds themselves, the chemicals and the equipment: everything in fact, except poor planning: I am particularly struck that they have managed to weed spray the city centre and are about to start the second spray there while Granton hasn't yet had its first treatment. Clearly one law for the rich and visitors and quite another for the local population.

'You may be aware that the problems associated with weed control have increased in recent years due to a change in the law affecting the chemicals we can use and our weather (which affects weed growth and efficacy of our treatments). We no longer use chemicals with a residual effect and the current control method requires weeds to be present for the chemical to work. I am also sure you can appreciate that the process of weed control is labour intensive and requires a co-ordinated approach of using trained staff with sprayers and machine mounted spraying equipment to be most effective.

In the north we started a programme working from the City Centre out to Leith then east to west and west to east. At present, we have completed the first treatment in Leith Walk and Leith wards, worked through Forth westward and the Wardieburn area should be completed by the end of this week (using a tractor sprayer) and most of Inverleith is complete apart from Drylaw. It will likely be completed in a few weeks before we then look to work out the start of the next spray treatment. This was started but as problems with weed growth increased the programmed approach was stretched to become more reactive before returning back to a programmed approach. We have also had staff involved in treating invasive species such as Giant Hogweed along the paths and waterways. Although we wanted to be able to flexible to react to complaints it may have hindered our programme.

A number of grounds staff and street cleansing staff are involved and staff from all neighbourhoods are involved in the treatment of the City Centre. The City Centre is currently being programmed for its second spray to be undertaken in the next couple of weeks.

This year there were discussions around budgets at a crucial time relative to the timing of the first weed treatment of the year (referred to by Peter and me in our conversations with Cllr Maginnis and others). This did affect the start of the programme because it affected the ability to balance operational costs across involving weed control within existing routine work and overtime working. Above this were some operational concerns, relating to availability of staff and equipment and faults of new tractor mounted sprayers, which have affected our ability to get areas treated not just quickly but effectively and safely. Changes will be required and will be ascertained once this first treatment is complete.

This does not excuse some of the streets and areas that have been referred to being heavy with weed growth and improvements can and need to be made to address this. Each neighbourhood gets two weed treatments per year with the City Centre receiving three treatments, which may also need to be reviewed both in terms of frequency and timing. I know there will be lessons learnt from the weed control programme undertaken thus far that will assist in making improvements next time and I hope the changes we make will make a difference.'