Bristol Weeding "Opt-Out" Update

In November 2025, the Environment and Sustainability Policy Committee published the Weed Management Policy, which included this action:

Conduct trial of pesticide opt-out and community weeding scheme followed by a review of findings. If successful identify funding for scaling up.

Details of the Community weeding scheme were then published:

On 24th May 2026 I submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for the following information:

Please can you provide the following data for each street that has successfully opted out using this scheme:

Street Name
Number of households in street
Number of households who voted to opt-out
Date that opt-out started
Date that opt-out ended (if applicable)

Also, please can you tell me how long an opt-out can be in force before a re-ballot of households is required.

On 10th June 2026 I received a response to my request.

You can look at the data I received in the public response.

Date that opt-out started and Date that opt-out ended

This information is not held.

This means that if a street follows the process to opt-out then we don't know when the opt-out started and there is no end date for the opt-out.

Number of households in street and Number of households who voted to opt-out

Majority support. A simple-majority vote (one per household) must show that residents support opting out of glyphosate spraying.

I interpreted this to mean that a majority of households on the street must vote to opt-out, but looking at the data it seems that only a the households that actually voted are counted.

For example on Aubrey Road (Bedminster) there are 120 households, of which 37 households (31%) voted. All of the 37 households voted for the opt-out, but the other 83 (69%) households did not vote. Should the 69% of households be considered as abstaining or as voting against?

My assumption is that the 37 households on Aubrey Road who voted to opt-out have also agreed to manually weed for the other 83 households as well.

There are 10 streets where a "proper" majority voted to opt-out:

There are 5 streets that did not have a "proper" majority:

And 4 streets where voting figures were not provided:

In total there are 19 streets that have opted out using the process defined in the Community Weeding Scheme.

The spreadsheet of "opted out" streets actually lists another 236 Streets where no ballot was carried out because it was opted out under a "Historic agreement" which did not follow the process defined in the Community Weeding Scheme.

Most of these Streets are in Southville because last year Cllr Christine Townsend decided to unilaterally opt-out all of the streets in Southville

For more details see:

Coronation Road

I live on Coronation Road which was "opted out" in the "Historic agreement" that Cllr Christine Townsend set up.

I am more than happy to do my bit and regularly "manually weed" the pavement outside our home:

But I do not follow the policy requirements:

Safety and risk management. Before each weeding session, volunteers must carry out a brief risk assessment and ensure:

I don't carry out a "brief risk assessment", but as I am the only person weeding I don't think this is a problem.

appropriate tools and personal protection equipment (PPE) are supllied and used

Does a blunt kitchen knife and some threadbare gloves count as "appropriate tools and PPE"?

pedestrian access is never restricted

I do move when bicycles and e-scooters come along the pavement.

work is carried out safely and responsibly

Perhaps....

Walking along my bit of Coronation Road it looks like 10% to 20% of Coronation Road residents keep their frontage weed free, but the vast majority don't.

Also, it is not safe for people to manually weed the pavement next to the very busy main road.

Back Road

The rear of my house is on Back Road, which was also unilaterally opted out by Christine. This is much more weedy than Coronation Road.

The Community Weeding Policy contains this requirement:

The street must appoint a volunteer co-ordinator to act as the point of contact.

But as most streets (including mine) were opted out before the policy was implemented we don't have a volunteer co-ordinator. Perhaps I should contact Christine and ask her to co-ordinate the volunteer weeders.

Cllr Townsend could use the FixMyStreet "weed" reports in Southville to get started on clearing the weeds herself.

The Trial

Conduct trial of pesticide opt-out and community weeding scheme followed by a review of findings.

When the trial is finished, could I suggest that BCC include this article in their "review of findings"?

There are likely to be some people who will say "just let the weeds grow", but they should understand that the Council have to control weeds due to the damage they cause to infrastructure which then requires expensive repair.