Question
Last year, the introduction of the new grass-cutting contract led to a large number of complaints and a lot of time and effort was expended by councillors, residents and officers sorting them out. Could the Executive Member please explain why the same problems are recurring with respect to some of the same areas of grass this year?
Minutes:
Question
Last year, the introduction of the new grass-cutting contract led to a large number of complaints and a lot of time and effort was expended by Councillors, residents and Officers sorting them out. Could the Executive Member please explain why the same problems are recurring with respect to some of the same areas of grass this year?
Answer
It is certainly true that we had problems during the early months of the Grounds Maintenance Contract in 2016 and these were explained at the time last year. However, last year those problems were generally dealt with by mid-July.
It is difficult to predict weather patterns and hence how things will grow. That is why we introduced an ‘outcomes’ based contract so that our contractor can be more flexible in responding to different weather patterns.
The 2017 cutting season started well in early March with the first cut being completed within four weeks. The second and third cuts started well but were disrupted by rain which saw the time for the second and third cuts fall behind by approximately two weeks.
ISS, our contractor, has mobilised an additional crew and they have almost caught up and expect the third cut to be completed by the end of June. They will then immediately start the fourth cut at the start of July and continue grass cutting during the growing period up to October. On top of the resources dedicated to grass cutting we have also worked in partnership with ISS to deal with overgrown vegetation and sight lines thereby avoiding many of the complaints we had last year.
On the positive front we have had a number of compliments from those who complained last year commenting on the improvements. We have also had a significant amount of compliments on the wild flower areas and especially those undertaken by ISS on the Showcase roundabout on the A329.
We will be extending the wild flower areas once again in 2018 so please let us know if you would like to put forward any specific areas in your respective wards. ISS has also agreed to assist in community bulb planting and are going to be working with the Wokingham District Veteran Tree Association on self-set hedgerow trees and how to develop and protect hedgerows around Cantley.
Supplementary Question
Obviously I am the Member for Winnersh so most of my experience is with Winnersh and I do know, however, that there are problems in other areas such as Arborfield, Earley and Twyford. The issue is not so much whether the cuts are delayed it is the larger areas of grass which are not being cut in exactly the same way as they were not cut last year and we resolved to sort out which bits would be cut and which bits wouldn’t but they have not cut the same bits they didn’t cut last year. I could give you a whole list of roads starting with Allnatt Avenue and ending with Woodward Close in Winnersh where we need to define more clearly how the larger areas should be kept because they are just not cutting them. They are leaving areas for informal play but you can lose your football in them because small children cannot see over the top of the grass and I am not really exaggerating very much.
So could you please try and sort out those larger areas of grass and get a plan for next year so that we know what they should look like. We don’t mind if the cuts are delayed by rain but we do want them to be cut and not just left.
Supplementary Answer
I will take that away. Clearly the idea of this was to let places like verges grow so that the plants and wildlife can thrive but the flipside of that was that the play areas would be cut as often as is required. So yes we need to be clear what has to be cut and at what frequency.