Grass cutting re-commenced in council maintained areas two weeks ago but quite a few people have been in touch, quite understandably, asking when the grass beside where they live is going to get cut. In addition, there’s been concerns about the volume of cut grass which will be left behind and the mess this is going to make as it spills on to footways.

As everyone will be aware, only services deemed critical to the Covid-19 response were permitted from 26th March until 31st May. This was set out in the Covid-19 regulations and the situation in regard to grass cutting is a pretty much mirrored throughout the UK.

Work has indeed started in all areas but the progress is understandably slower than normal due to the length of the grass. The intention is to do as good a job as possible but it might take two or three cuts to achieve this.

The council is concentrating on green space that is well used by the public and not all grass areas will be cut this year. The priority is parks, road verges, cemeteries and sheltered housing.

Local councillor Steve Delaney said, “I share everyone’s frustration about the unsightly overgrown grass but I can assure you the ground maintenance teams are doing their best to get this tidied up as quickly as possible. However, it’s an issue affecting the whole city so the task is huge”.

“Ordinarily they would not remove grass cuttings as their machines don’t collect the grass and they don’t have the time or manpower to do this manually. However, they are doing this on the first cut idue to the length of the grass. The downside is that it’s slowing them down”.

“In addition, their machines are not designed to cut such long grass and that too is adding to the timescale and, in some cases the end result isn’t as well cut as they would like”.

“These guys are doing their best to turn around a situation that was entirely outwith their control. I am unable to say when any specific area will get cut. All I can ask is for everyone to have a little more patience and hopefully everything will start looking a bit tidier over the coming weeks”.