Blitzed: Mayor Perry’s grass-cutting programme has destroyed half a wildflower conservation meadow at Thornton Heath Rec
Hard-working community volunteers were left devastated this week when grass-cutting contractors hired by Croydon Council visited Thornton Heath Rec and proceeded to destroy a large part of a carefully nurtured wildflower meadow.
A council official has quickly issued an apology to the community group which does so much work to maintain Thornton Heath Recreation Ground. The official said that the grass-cutting team’s performance was “wholly unacceptable” and “will not be tolerated again”.
But in mid-summer, when wildflowers are coming into bloom, with the prospect of them self-seeding the area for future seasons, the damage has been done.
“Words fail me sometimes,” said one local.
“This is awful and a mockery of public members who volunteer and give up their time,” they said. “The council don’t make anything better, in my view. In an age where we need more nature, too.”
The grass-cutting “blitz” – some of it conducted indiscriminately through what’s supposed to be “No-Mow May” – has been a high-profile aspect of Croydon Mayor Jason Perry’s re-election campaign, as he tries to convince locals he can manage to get anything done right.
Articles on the council’s website have boasted of how the cash-strapped council had splashed £1.5million on new tractors, ride-on-mowers and specialist bank mowers.
Blitz on wildlife: Mayor Perry, right, and his cabinet member, absentee councillor Scott Roche, with one of their new mowing machines (the driver is not thought to be involved in the Thornton Heath shambles)
But with the council’s dedicated parks and gardens team obliterated through spending cuts, Perry’s council now has to hire-in contractors, often from outside the borough, with less affinity with the local parks and communities.
Graham Mitchell was the volunteer from Friends of Thornton Heath Rec who first noticed the contractors’ gung-ho approach in the public open space.
“Normally, I’m pleased to see the grass being cut in The Rec, but not today as the contractors decimated one half of the wildflower meadow before I got there,” he posted on social media.
Had Mitchell not acted promptly on his own initiative, the contractors may well have destroyed the whole of the wildflower meadow, which has been maintained under an agreement with council officials, who have mapped the areas of the recreation ground accordingly.
“I stopped them cutting the other half,” Mitchell wrote, and asked why they weren’t following the map.
“I was told that they weren’t given the map and had been told to ‘cut everything’!”
The incident illustrates vividly how the work of the borough’s many voluntary ecology grounds can be undone simply because council services have been outsourced for “efficiency”, seeing services performed instead by workers who have little, if any, affinity for the areas they are serving.
“Our volunteers do so much around The Rec and this is a real case of disrespect,” Mitchell said.
“So much for the lip-service mantra from our council that they value the work of friends’ groups.”
Mitchell described the situation as “shambolic”.
Mitchell’s formal complaint to the council received a speedy reply, which contradicted what the contractors had told the volunteer just a day earlier. “The contractors were telling me porkies about not having a map,” Mitchell said.
The council official’s response said, “The team were not instructed to ‘cut everything’, as the area supervisor is fully aware of the conservation meadow area within the park and has spoken with the team about this meadow area on several occasions.”
The official maintained that the grass-cutting team had indeed been issued with a map of where, and where not, to cut the grass.
“I personally met with the team responsible for the cutting of this meadow this morning and made it very clear that their failure to complete this site correctly was wholly unacceptable and that this should not have happened and will not be tolerated again.”
The official said that the work in Thornton Heath Rec will next time be under the supervision of a member of council staff “to ensure the site is mown correctly”.
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