Buckinghamshire Council does its bit to save water during the hosepipe ban

With the Thames Water hosepipe ban coming into force today (Wednesday 24 August) Buckinghamshire Council is taking some actions to reduce water use in parks and open spaces.

While some council activity is exempt from the ban, it’s still really important to do what we can to reduce water use when the same is being asked of local people and businesses.

From today, we will stop watering bedding plants in many of our public parks and open spaces, removing plants where necessary back to our depots to prevent beds becoming an eyesore. The only trees we will continue to water under the exemption are any recently planted trees and newly landscaped areas.

In our country parks, the only watering we will be completing is for young specimen trees that have been planted in the last 12-18 months such as our Sakura Cherry trees at Black Park.

At Stoke Poges Memorial Gardens the Memorial Gardens have their own bore hole which is used to water plants, shrubs and trees but we will be doing this sparingly and only in areas that need it, mainly for historical plants and trees. We will be watering the bedding plants with bore hole water instead of using the hosepipe during the ban.

At South Bucks Golf Course greens will continue to be watered using a licenced borehole; the patio areas will only be washed down for health and safety reasons and the hedgerow will not be watered from today.  Buggies will only be cleaned when needed but using buckets of water rather than jet wash.

Where sports fields are concerned, we will only water turf for health and safety reasons; for example we have carried out some repair work to two adult football pitches and will need to water the new seed – as we are able to under the restrictions.

Clive Harriss is Buckinghamshire Council’s Cabinet Member for Culture and Leisure. He said:

“We’ve given careful consideration in the days leading up to this hosepipe ban as to what we should prioritise to do our bit to save water. Even though the council can use water in some circumstances under exemption, we wanted to adopt an approach of using as little as we can anyway – particularly when it’s essential that we all do what we can to preserve water during this prolonged dry weather.

“I thank residents for their understanding and urge everyone to check the Thames Water website to check what we should all be doing at this time, and for their great tips on how to save water in general.”