Kirklees grounds maintenance crisis: 'Desperate times' for the council as they call on the public to help maintain green spaces across the district

As the mounting workforce pressures faced by the department have come to light, measures are being explored to deal with the increasing demands placed on the service. These include grass being cut less often at sites across the borough, and community groups getting more involved in caring for their local green spaces.

The grounds maintenance team is responsible for looking after the majority of green spaces in Kirklees of which there are over 5000. This includes 1.9 square miles of grass, 28 miles of hedges, and 120 sports pitches.

Staff shortages, budget struggles, and the inability to buy new equipment when needed were said to be just some of the problems faced by the department. The current 70 staff are said to be taking on a workload equivalent to 103 people during the summer months.

The matter was discussed at a meeting of the council’s Economy and Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Panel this week where suggestions that sports teams and community groups get involved in looking after their local green spaces were made.

An officer explained that the department works with ‘In Bloom’ groups to help small towns and villages flourish, as well as working alongside ‘Friends of groups’ in many parks to ensure working for a common goal, as well as providing practical work experience.

However, despite these links with the community that benefit both parties, the council is calling for more community involvement as expectations are said to be “pushing the team beyond the capacity we’ve got.”

To ease the workload, one proposal was that sports teams across the district “take more ownership” of the grassy pitches they use by helping with their maintenance.

Coun John Taylor (Con, Kirkburton) raised a question around whether the reduction in grass cuts would be applied to football fields, concerned for the impact this could have.

In response, Graham West, Kirklees Council’s service director for highways said: “We’re trying to work with football clubs in order to give that extra benefit. So we might have a service where we cut at one level but if we can encourage, work with them, provide tools, equipment, or otherwise to increase the level of standard then that’s where the direction of travel needs to be and I think there is a move now to look at more opportunities for volunteers to help and support across what is a significant borough.”

Coun Taylor said the council needed to be “mindful” and highlighted an issue with the maintenance of a football pitch in the Kirkburton ward. He said: “The club did step up to start doing some additional cuts and then they were dumping all the grass at the edge of the football pitch and we ended up with a right mess where over time it started degrading and it made the area unusable.”

Coun Martyn Bolt (Con, Mirfield) also weighed in on the subject and said: “I know many have been stepping up for some time. Cricket clubs in Mirfield have been having a hybrid situation where they’ve been maintaining the square, and Kirklees have been maintaining the outfield.”

The role community groups could play was also discussed. Coun Tyler Hawkins (Labour, Dalton) said: “there are areas which are deprived areas that struggle to form community groupings and that means they’re going to be less likely to put a group in place to help deliver the services that the council has been providing over the years.

“The public will have a view that the council should be doing the maintenance entirely and I would agree with that view but desperate times call for desperate measures and I think asking the public to help us maintain our green spaces is the way we’ve got to go.”

Coun Taylor spoke of the difficulties he’d encountered in trying to engage with groups in his ward. He said: “I approached a couple of community groups in my patch about the possibility of them maybe taking on some of the grass cutting even if they were paid for it. There was a reluctance to do it because what you find with community groups is invariably, they’re reliant on a small number of people and if those people disappear, or they’re unwell or they move away it falls.”

Cutbacks have been a part of the grounds maintenance department’s history with £1.3m slashed from the budget in 2015. At this time, parks and recreation grounds were put into one of four categories – gold, silver, bronze or natural – to determine how often the grass would be cut. Now, as an “interim measure,” officers have proposed the creation of a new category combining silver and bronze which would see grass cut every three weeks.

The categories were outlined in more detail at the meeting:

Gold sites include primary parks, crematoriums and some town centre spaces and would be cut every two weeks on average, keeping floral displays, shrub beds and hedges maintained as required and play and sports facilities also included.

The new combined silver and bronze category covers secondary parks, recreation grounds, verges and cemeteries. Here, the grass would be cut every three weeks on average, plant areas would be limited and shrub beds and hedges trimmed once each year.

All existing natural areas would continue to be categorised as such with limited maintenance, being left to grow freely.