Erewash flower displays pruned

Flowerbeds on White Lion Square in Ilkeston in 2018. Image from Google.

Calls to “go out with a bang” and spend all of a Derbyshire council’s money reinstating £190,000 flower displays before it is abolished have been pruned.

At an Erewash Borough Council meeting last week (Thursday, July 23rd), Reform UK had urged the Labour authority to reinstate flowerbeds to pre-Covid conditions.

The meeting heard that councillors are regularly lobbied about the condition of local parks and verges due to rewilding and wildflower cultivation versus historic award-winning flower arrangements.

There are said to have only been seven formal complaints made to the council in the last year by residents over grass-cutting and flower arrangements.

The meeting was told it cost the council £190,000 a year to fund the previous ceremonial flower displays, including maintenance of the former authority-owned greenhouses at West Park in Long Eaton, which have been shut down.

Councillor Dan Price (Ref), said people were proud of Erewash as a result of its flower displays and said he was not “attacking” the concept of rewilding, if implemented properly.

He said: “It isn’t a choice between people and nature. We can have wildflower meadows where appropriate but we can also have well-maintained parks and verges.”

Cllr Price said the loss of the flowerbeds makes people feel less valued, which also impacts their “civic pride”, saying their reinstatement would help the borough “flourish”.

Cllr Paul Maginnis (Ref) said it had now been three years since the borough declared a climate emergency and said it had yet to prove it was not “woke nonsense”.

He said areas of unkempt grass had revealed “drug paraphernalia and dog muck” and had left parks looking a “complete and utter disgrace”.

Cllr Ann Mills (Gre) said: “People need to accept that we are not going back to old fashioned flower displays that do nothing to contribute to biodiversity. Do we really want council staff driving around in fossil fuel powered vehicles dragging bowsers full of water around when residents are being told not to use their hosepipes?

“The flowers may look attractive but they have very little value to the natural world.”

Cllr Kewal Singh Athwal (Con) said: “Our whole borough used to be colourful. You have decimated everything we have done previously. I don’t see any pride in Erewash the way things are at the moment.”

Lead member for the environment, Labour’s Cllr Mark Alfrey, said the council had already reinstated pre-Covid level grass cutting and said the borough’s parks had recently received Green Flag awards for their high quality, with judges saying they are in “excellent condition”.

He said the £190,000 cost of flowerbeds per year was “unsustainable”, at nearly £1 million over five years on “throwaway expenditure”.

Cllr Jane White (Con) said: “You need to engage and not enrage the local community. We need to see active restoration rather than simply stopping maintenance altogether.”

Fellow Conservative Cllr Andrew Prince said: “The flowers do have a short shelf life but do provide beautiful civic spaces. It can’t be simplified down to pounds and pence. I don’t see the flowers and think ‘what a waste of money’.

Cllr Joel Bryan (Lab) said the rewilding and biodiversity changes were always going to be a three to four year process before they “bear the fruits of our labour” and said the borough could not go back to “old damaging practices”.

Conservative opposition leader Cllr Wayne Major said: “If we can’t get the basics right how can we get the more complex things right. Let’s get Erewash looking neat and tidy.”

Cllr Dave Snaith (Lab) said: “There seems to be a preference of looks over substance.”

Former Conservative leader, Cllr Carol Hart, said: “If you don’t want to spend the money, find the sponsors. I am ashamed when I drive through Ilkeston. It looks so drab and miserable. 

“People used to come into the town to see the flowers and would spend money when they visited. Don’t just abandon the area.”

Labour councillor Harry Atkinson, former Mayor, said the Labour administration had invested hundreds of thousands of pounds supporting town centre businesses and said opposition members had simply pitched “a few sticking plaster motions”, adding “flowers will not save Erewash”.

Concluding, Cllr Price said: “Local Government Reorganisation is around the corner (April 2028). We should go out with a bang and spend the money. I have had no end of complaints about the grass cutting and the flowers. It is embarrassing.

“People just want their flowers back and their grass cutting.”