Content

11.1

As per section 10.2,
subsection 3 of the decision taken by the Waste and Street Scene
Committee on 27th September 2023, it was resolved unanimously that
a report should be brought back to the Committee in February 2024
setting out next steps for the Authority in phasing out the use of
Glyphosate in highway areas.

 

 

11.2

RESOLVED
UNANIMOUSLY: That the Waste and Street
Scene Policy Committee:
 

1.    
approves the continuation of the city-wide reduction
in the use of Glyphosate as was agreed unanimously on 27th
September 2023;
 

2.    
agrees that officers supplement efforts to reduce
the use of Glyphosate by carrying out limited operational trials of
the FoamStream system during 2024;
 

3.    
agrees that officers use the FoamStream trials as
the basis to calculate both cost and environmental implications of
the system and present this to Committee in December
2025;
 

4.    
retains the option, in December 2025, to instruct
the commencement of a further three-year trial of maintaining trial
areas of the highway using alternative measures which are
Glyphosate free from 1st January 2026 to 1st January
2029;
 

5.    
agrees that, if the legislative position on
Glyphosate changes in the intervening period, officers commit to
return to Committee within 3 months of any legislative change
announcement with a revised position for the Committee to consider;
and
 

6.    
agrees that, regardless of the legislative position,
officers will return to Committee by December 2025 to advise on the
total usage of Glyphosate products throughout the current trial of
reduction measures, alongside detailed cost implications to enable
the Committee to decide whether they wish to progress to the next
phase of trials.

 

 

11.3

Reasons for Decision

 

 

11.3.1

Approval of the
recommendations will allow:
 

·      
A continuing reduction in the use of glyphosate in
highway areas across all of Sheffield.

·      
Establishing better baseline data around longer-term
impacts of cessation.

 

 

11.4

Alternatives Considered and Rejected

 

 

11.4.1

The option to ‘do
nothing’ was considered and discounted considering both the
declaration of a Nature Emergency and the support received for the
petition against the use of Glyphosate.

 

 

11.4.2

The option to cease the use of
Glyphosate on all land immediately was considered but discounted
due to high level of cost/expenditure. Sheffield has 1,064,045.03
square metres of high usage footways and 8,77,757.67 square metres
of lower use footways in the city.
 
Based on a “worst case
scenario” of around 10% of the footway network failing
between 2023 and 2037 due to weeds and vegetation this is estimated
to cover around £116 million pounds in
resurfacing.
 
Additional Street Cleansing
Costs have also been modelled based on 42 additional operatives,
additional road sweepers, and other vehicles, and plant machinery
being brought into the operation to uplift street cleansing service
to manually remove weeds has also been costed at around £2.4
million per year – circa £32 million over the remainder
of the PFI contract.
 
Therefore, the total potential
cost implication of complete cessation in a worst-case scenario
could be as high as £150 million of additional expenditure.
This may however be mitigated should there be a legislative
change.