Haydon Wick takes matters into its own hands as borough's weeds are left to go to seed

Haydon Wick Parish Council has paid for extra weed treatment on land it looks after, after Swindon Borough Council's wider spraying programme was delayed by procurement issues earlier in the year. The borough's work is now under way across Swindon through October and November, with completion hoped for by 20 November, weather and operations permitting.

Councillor Leigh Jackson, chair of the Parks and Open Spaces Committee, said the parish had no say over the borough's procurement timetable and simply got on with treating its own patches rather than wait. The borough has since appointed a contractor under a new two year contract, though Cllr Jackson noted the late start means many weeds will already have seeded, which in weed terms is the equivalent of retiring comfortably.

Residents in Haydon Wick have reportedly begun to assess pavement weeds by jurisdiction, noting with quiet satisfaction which stretch of kerb belongs to the parish and which has been left to the borough's own timetable. A demarcation line has emerged along one road where the grass verge appears noticeably better behaved on one side.

Brenda Pask, 72, of Old Town, who has lived there since before it was old, said she had conducted a tour of inspection with Ron's old border fork and come away unimpressed. 'In my day the council came round with a flame gun and you knew where you stood,' she said. 'Now you need to know whose responsibility the pavement is before you can even complain about it properly.'

Gary Tench, Area Manager at Tench Paper Solutions in Westlea, said the situation had given him a new way of describing his firm's own supplier mix up, where a pallet of recycled copier paper sat in a Theale warehouse for six weeks while two departments argued over whose budget code it belonged to. 'We're calling it organic growth,' he said. 'Some things just need time to establish root systems before you harvest the value.'

A council spokesperson confirmed a post treatment schedule would follow once the work is finished, and urged residents to report any weeds behaving suspiciously. The weeds themselves, having already gone to seed, declined to comment, on the grounds that their work here was done.