Grass cutting highway verges

Maintaining highway verges - what we do

We have a dedicated team who maintain green spaces, including the grass verges on the highway. This means:

We aim to cut grass 14 times a year, every 2 to 3 weeks between late March and October. We keep to this schedule when we can, but we can't cut grass if it's very wet.

The team use large mowers to cut an open area of grass. If needed, we return later to use smaller machinery to cut around trees and other obstacles such as bins and lampposts. We aim to do this twice a year. Teams are mindful of cars parked alongside a grass verge. This means that where a car is parked, the verge edge won’t be trimmed to avoid damaging the car.

Since introducing a reduction in the use of glyphosate, we have now stopped weed spraying in all public parks, green spaces, grass verges and cemeteries. This includes spraying around trees, bins and lampposts. This means these may now look a little different, as the grass is left to grow around them for longer. Find out more about our commitment to reduce glyphosate spraying.

Grass cuttings that fall on public footpaths are blown back onto the grass, but we don’t collect grass from open areas.

 Visit our parks maintenance page to see how our teams keep our parks looking their best for everyone to enjoy. 

Where we don’t cut the grass

We don’t cut grass: 

• On land that is privately owned
• Where we're keeping the grass long to attract bees and increase the number of areas where bees can live in the borough. Bees naturally feed on the flowers made by long grasses and wildflowers. As bees are in danger of becoming extinct, we want to leave the landscape as friendly as possible for bees, butterflies and other pollinators where we can  
• On properties owned by L&Q, any other housing association or landlord. You should speak to them directly if you've a question about cutting your grass