This was the rubbish dumped near the Lloyd Park car park over the weekend. Photos: Lucinda Offer
Friends groups of the borough’s parks are becoming increasingly concerned at the behaviour and conduct of some of those who swarmed into the open spaces at the weekend, leaving tons of rubbish behind them.
The photograph above was taken near the car park in Lloyd Park, after a sunny summer’s weekend saw thousands of people flock to the park for picnics and barbecues, ignoring the lockdown regulations introduced to tackle coronavirus. Inside Croydon has received reports of similar anti-social behaviour in other parks, too, prompting serious health concerns.
Even as those rules are being eased from today, gathering in groups of more than six in public spaces is not allowed. And leaving piles of rubbish is not allowed, whatever the circumstances.
With council parks budgets reduced to little or nothing, it has increasingly become the task of volunteers and friends’ groups to carry out basic maintenance functions like litter-picking. But the scale of the rubbish left dumped in the parks during the covid-19 emergency is as daunting as it is disgusting.
“Why do people think that they can trash a public park in this way,” one concerned volunteer told Inside Croydon.
Someone else’s problem: park users showed little consideration for others at the weekend
With a continuing possibility of the spread of the virus, having to dispose of other people’s rubbish puts the health of council contractors or volunteers who deal with it at risk.
“If this is what is supposed to be the ‘new normal’, it doesn’t look much different from the ‘old normal’, except we probably have fewer resources to deal with it,” said the source.
“The people who left their rubbish behind could have, should have taken it home with them – they clearly were able to bring it with them to the park, so they ought to have taken it away with them, instead of making it someone else’s problem.”
There is also growing fears that there could soon be grass fires in one of the borough’s parks and beauty spots, caused by people breaking park by-laws by using disposable barbecue trays.
With virtually no rain since February, open spaces are tinder dry and need little for the grass to catch fire – as happened at Croham Hurst two years ago, with a series of fires on the delicate heathland habitat which took the Fire Brigade several visits to deal with.
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For once I am not being nasty or critical. It feels good. Must the combined effect of weather and the easing of lockdown. Lloyd Park is superb. It is really well kept with a nice balance of tended and untended areas and lots of new planting. Madam and I often go there just to sit on a bench and enjoy seeing a vista with space. Most mornings there is a pile of rubbish around each bin but very little on the fields or around generally. Most of the rubbish seems to disappear within a day or so but who collects it is a mystery. Much of it is obviously left at night when people manage to be less than socially properly distant….and unobserved.
Arno is right and it is the council that remove it all. Frankly I think they do a good job at the moment, the bins are inadequate for the present use of the area so piles are left close by. Thank you everybody who does that, and DISGUSTING to those, and there are some, who just abandon theirs when they sat. What right do they have to use the facilities and just abandon their bags,bottles etc Also disgusting are those people who need to have a BBQ so burn the seats and tables as well as the grass – just think if everybody did this what would we be left with?
Hello all. I’m a member of the disc golf club and we regularly (weekly) remove sacks of rubbish. It’s a battle you never win. I’ve seen other people picking up litter from the community. It certainly isn’t the council, who I believe only pick litter from the cut grass areas. The biggest littering we find is beer cans and dog waste in bags.
Dogshit in bags. This has been going on for years but I’ve never found out why people do it. Does anyone who reads this blog know anyone who leaves dogshit in bags, and especially do they know anyone who goes to the trouble of hanging their dogshit bags on trees?
If so could you please find out from them what purpose they think doing that serves.