I’m afraid Conservative councillor Samer Bagaeen is rather wide of the mark when he tries to give the history of the pavement weedkiller ban (We are keen to see how weeds issue is resolved – Argus May 13).

Cllr Bagaeen says that the Labour administration banned weedkillers in 2019.

This is partially true but what he fails to mention is that his Conservative colleagues on the environment committee, where the ban was introduced on November 26, 2019, also voted in favour of this.

This committee approved the following recommendations at this meeting: 

1) That the committee agrees to end the use of glyphosate by Brighton and Hove City Council’s city environmental management services with immediate effect, other than in exceptional cases to kill invasive plant species, such as Japanese Knotweed or to kill tree stumps

2) That the committee agrees that city environmental management will not engage with contractors to use glyphosate on any land managed by these departments.

3) That committee approves to city environmental management working with other departments to phase out glyphosate use across the council and to work towards phasing out other pesticide use by 2022.

4) That the committee notes that the removal of weeds in parks and on hard surfaces will be undertaken manually as an alternative approach to using pesticides.

5) That the committee agrees that an update report should be brought back to committee in autumn 2020 to update me. 

The two Conservative councillors at the meeting expressed some concern at the proposals but did not call for a vote.

So the recommendations were passed by the committee “on the nod” by all those present.

In other words, there was cross-party agreement on this plan. This included the Conservative councillors. They did not vote against it or abstain.

Unfortunately, this reversed a decision made by an earlier environment committee, on which I sat, to reduce the use of weedkiller but to retain one pavement weed spray a year until a realistic alternative could be found.

What I can’t understand and what other Argus letter writers have said is why is there no discussion on alternative herbicides that didn’t contain glyphosate?

To deal with the pavement weed on a manual basis would require hundreds of staff and is clearly in the realms of cloud cuckoo land.

Cllr Peter Atkinson

Independent, North Portslade