Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
Meeting to decide on £300,000 tidy up
Proposals to reverse North Lanarkshire Council’s controversial cessation of cutting grass in 1800 open spaces across the area will be debated at a special council meeting tomorrow.
SNP members were successful in their request to call a special assembly of elected members – and will campaign for the affected plots of land to be cut and strimmed this year at a oneoff cost of £300,000, ahead of a review of the policy in next year’s budget.
Tomorrow’s virtual meeting follows complaints and even petitions from residents regarding the condition and appearance of the area this summer, after the council last year stopped maintaining outdoor spaces which it does not own.
Opposition group leader Councillor Jordan Linden said: “I hope all colleagues across North Lanarkshire can get behind this action and deliver for our communities.
“A special meeting of the council means we can deliver urgent funding into fixing these issues that local people are experiencing and review the delivery of the grass-cutting programme.
“We have been listening to local people and our message is that we hear you, loud and clear. Enough is enough; people need solutions to these issues and need them now.”
SNP depute leader Fiona Fotheringham added: “Our communities need their views addressed and action to be taken, and I hope councillors from all parties will back our emergency business and deliver additional support.
“We have consistently made alternative choices to avoid those savings, and others could do the same. It’s time to reflect again on these decisions.”
The group’s request for a special meeting was approved by chief executive Des Murray, after SNP members had “discussions with council officers” and revised the wording of their original motion in relation to the separate issues of weedkiller use and maintenance at cemeteries.
Now they will propose to tomorrow’s meeting that the authority “commits to a one-off cut in areas both under council ownership and the 1800 areas of previously-maintained non-council land by the end of this season, within a budget of £300,000”, to be funded by “temporary use of one-off resources” such as its Covid-19 contingency fund.
The SNP group is also calling for an update report at a future committee meeting, and describes the issue as one “of real importance to the people of North Lanarkshire” and which is having a “significant impact”.
Council leader Jim Logue called the debate “irresponsible”, saying North Lanarkshire has been forced to reduce maintenance staff numbers and the scale of its programme due to budget reductions.
He told the Advertiser: “£300 million of SNP cuts have forced the council to reduce the number of ground maintenance staff by over 300 and reduce the number of cuts of council-owned land.
“The SNP know all of this but yet again would prefer to indulge in petty political games. I sincerely hope that at the special meeting, their leader will apologise to residents not only for their irresponsibility but for the catastrophic SNP cuts inflicted on North Lanarkshire which have led us to this moment.”
Cllr Logue had previously said it would be “bizarre and totally unacceptable” for the authority to use its increasingly stretched resources to maintain land not within its own control. And he hit out at the opposition-led continuation of the authority’s ban on glyphosate weedkiller, criticising its additional expense and its result of “weeds growing out of control”.