East Hants District Council relives Alice's Restaurant

The seven houses where I live received a letter from East Hampshire District Council this morning.

It read:

“It has been brought to our attention that there is a considerable amount of garden waste being dumped in the footpath…”

It went on “Under section 33 of the Environmental Protection act…. you are liable to 12 months in prison or a £50,000 fine….”

Assuming that  a huge pile of rotting vegetation, discarded armchairs and broken fridges had suddenly and miraculously appeared overnight I went to have a look.

Like you I was completely underwhelmed by the grass clippings I found tucked away on a countryside verge, surrounded by fields, close to the entrance to a countryside commission woodland path, comprising a huge amount of naturally growing, dying, rotting, living, breathing, vegetation; mostly grass. Obviously re-enacting the Arlo Guthrie part in Alice’s Restaurant, the gardener had cut the grass verge and discreetly put the clippings under the hedge. Grass being grass it will be gone in a couple of weeks, having rotted down into compost and refreshed the soil.

Walking through some of the paths in the area you will find, mattresses, fridges, armchairs, cots and those bits of garden plastic the kids play with for a while and then lose interest in when they turn green after being left outside for the winter.

Assuming the Contracts Supervisor that wrote to me is on a local government average wage and that the letter took  a couple of hours to write, plus stationery, postage and the time of the post clerks at the council. This pile of grass has cost around £300. I expect, being an enthusiastic and diligent council employee, a great deal of the working day is spent pursuing errant gardeners and their grass clippings. Multiply this across all of the councils and that mentality is wasting a phenomenal amount of money.

When councils are complaining that they do not have enough funding to cover necessary items they might like to look at simple ways of cutting costs. Can I suggest focussing on the items that are important and ignoring the ones that simply do not matter. The £300 pile of grass clippings is a very good starting point.