Post Project Review

Project Title	Road Sweeping & Strimming as Weed Maintenance 2023
Author	Fenella Lillywhite
Date	18/09/2023
Version	0.1

Purpose of This Document

To collate and review the information and feedback from the trial of road sweeping and strimming as weed maintenance and understand the successes and issues faced.

To present the outcome and conclusions made from this trial.

Trial Overview

On the 31^st July 2023 a trial was undertaken utilising a road sweeper from Wealden District Council and East Sussex Highway strimming team to understand the effect these techniques have on weed maintenance.

This trial was undertaken on 4 select roads in Hailsham:

· Swan Road

· Hawthylands Road

· Hawkswood Drive

· Lansdowne Road

Benefits Noted

• No Glyphosate used.
• Appeases residents against the use of glyphosate.
• A cleaner, neater finish compared to traditional spraying.

Issues Noted

• Labour intensive; minimum of 3 persons to strim and drive road sweeper.
• Slow; this method takes longer than traditional spraying.
• Noisy; this method is very noisy due to the strimmer, blower and sweeper.
• Potential car damage, from strimming and flicking stones.
• Parked cars can impact this method’s efficiency substantially as works cannot go ahead.
• Roots generally remain in place meaning quicker regrowth.
• Across Authority collaboration could be hard to programme.  

ESCC Asset Engineer Feedback

An ESCC officer supervised the trial advising that two roads (Hawkswood Drive & Swan Road) were abandoned due to the volume of parked cars, causing manoeuvrability issues for the sweeper, and concerns from the contractors of loose stones and proximity to the parked cars.

See Appendix A for images from the Lansdowne Road and Hawthylands Road trials.

The officer then visited again at 2 weeks and 4 weeks after the initial maintenance was undertaken. See Appendix B for comparison images.  

The officer advised that the trial sites have had minimal weed regrowth, especially following a particularly wet summer. Although highlighted one site with the worst regrowth across the trial sites. See Appendix C.

Wealden District Council & Biffa Feedback

Wealden District Council and Biffa representatives highlighted that although the technique worked and the results were acceptable, it took 6hrs to clear 2 roads which is not viable and very costly. They would not be able to allocate enough resource to undertake this technique.

Costs

This method will have increased costs due to the labour-intensive technique of strimming requiring additional personnel.

As District and Borough Councils already fully utilise their road sweepers, a potential additional cost may be either subsidising them or renting the equipment to undertake highways specific weed maintenance.

Outcome & Conclusion

Although effective, this method has a lot of constraints in terms of accessing all areas where weed maintenance is needed.

It also has an increased cost due to the number of personnel required and potential re-visits.

This joined up approach will continue to be reviewed, through bi-annual meetings with District and Boroughs.

Appendix A

Landsdowne Road:

Hawthylands Road:

Appendix B

Appendix C