Weeds costing council millions in repairs after damage to pavements across Brighton
Councillors said that uncontrolled weed growth is one of the primary causes of damage
The cost of leaving weeds untreated could be as high as £60 million in Brighton and Hove, councillors were told during the annual budget meeting.
The figure emerged when Labour councillor Tim Rowkins who said: “Uncontrolled weed growth is one of the primary causes of damage to our pavements.
“We currently spend £50,000 a month on reactive repairs to pavements. We have a backlog of repairs totalling £60 million.
“I’ll leave it to your imagination what would happen to that number if we failed to act – but ignoring the problem is just not serious policy-making.”
Councillor Rowkins, who chairs Brighton and Hove City Council’s City Environment, South Downs and the Sea Committee, was responding to an attempt by the Greens to divert money from weedkiller use.
When the Greens took charge of the council in 2020, he said, they had acted “as though the weed problem in the city did not exist”.
The council stopped using glyphosate, a controversial herbicide also known as Roundup, in 2019 after councillors of all colours backed a ban during the election campaign.
When spraying stopped with no effective replacement, pavements became overrun with weeds, most notably in the suburbs, and plant life sprouted on kerbs and in gutters across Brighton and Hove.
During the local election campaign last year, the weeds – and Brighton and Hove’s “rewilded” streets – became more of an issue with voters than weedkiller had been four years before.
In January, the City Environment, South Downs and the Sea Committee voted to start using glyphosate again.
The plan is to treat weeds on pavements using a “controlled droplet” method, with the weedkiller suspended in an oil-based medium and sprayed directly on to the plants. Previously, glyphosate was sprayed indiscriminately from quad bikes.
The proposals nonetheless led to protests outside the meeting – and a petition on the Change.org website, objecting to the return of “toxic weedkillers”, has more than 6,500 signatures.
Green councillor Kerry Pickett told the budget council meeting yesterday (Thursday 22 December) that scores of wildlife and environmental groups were against the return of the herbicide.
They included the Brighton Downs Alliance, the Beacon Hub Rottingdean, Benfield Hill Wildlife and Conservation Group and the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership.
Councillor Pickett said: “I’d like to ask that the council listens to these voices and responds by taking the right course of action which is to reconsider the £266,000 set aside for – in Brighton and Hove Labour’s own words – ‘harmful glyphosate’.
“Consider our amendment that includes repurposing some of this money to provide investment in the city’s carbon-neutral 2030 and circular economy programme.”
Labour councillor Theresa Fowler said that this year was a “reset year” for weed management. She added that glyphosate would not be used in green spaces and parks but on pavements which, she said, “are not meant to be rewilded”.
Councillor Fowler said that, as much as she liked to see wildflowers growing out of the pavement, she had also seen photographs of people’s injuries suffered after tripping over weeds.
She said: “If there are no weeds on the pavement, little or no treatment will be needed. Over the past year, we have tried many different ways of removing the weeds and have talked to staff who have told us manual weeding is not working.
“Many of them have suffered with repetitive strain injury and can only do this work for two hours.”
The council used a weed-ripping machine but it took only the tops of the plants, leaving the roots to regrow. It also damaged pavements.
Councillor Fowler said that she was aware that farmers in the area were still using Roundup as it was not banned and the council was working with its farm tenants to reduce the use of herbicides and pesticides.