Nearly 1,000 sign weedspraying petition launched by Cambridgeshire’s opposition councillors

Nearly 1,000 people have signed a petition launched by Cambridgeshire County Council’s opposition in a bid to get weed spraying reintroduced across the area.

So far 713 have added their name to the petition launched by Conservative Charlie Marks on Saturday August 19 in response to people moaning about the state of overgrown pavements and roadside gulleys.

In total 3,000 people need to have signed up by Wednesday October 18 if the petition is to be considered by Cambridgeshire’s full council.

With the current total still shy of a third of the needed signatures Coun Marks and his fellow Tories are hoping others will join the call to see a weedkilling regime reintroduced.

Spraying was not carried out this summer following a decision earlier this year by the joint administration to only kill common weeds if they were causing a hazard.

Coun Marks says in his petition that he believes the decision, made to save money with the added bonus of helping biodiversity, was short sighted and will in the long run cost more.

He said weeds are growing through the area’s footpaths and pavements causing damage that will require repairing.

Coun Marks also said the weeds growing throughout the county’s towns and villages has given them an air of decay and described the roads between settlements as a “look more appropriate in a post apocalypse movie than a first world country”.

The council’s current policy means weeds are only dealt with if they are deemed hazardous to people. Whether or not this is the case is determined by an inspector checking out a weed or weeds reported by the public and deciding if or not it should be sprayed. The whole process can take up to 10 weeks.

It had been hoped that people might pluck weeds as they come across them and so help to alleviate the need for spraying and keep the place tidy.

Unfortunately that does not seem to have happened and there has been a lot of negative comments about the state of roads and pavements as a result on social media.

Coun Marks’ petition can be found on Cambridgeshire County Council’s website under the epetitions heading.