Clarification

In an article in the Leicester Mercury titled ‘Campaigners celebrate as pesticide use ended’ published on February 27^th 2026, the Leicester Mercury quoted a spokesperson for Leicester City Council who apparently had said that, ‘We use glyphosate-based products that are non-toxic to humans and animals and controlled droplet applicators for targeted spraying’.

We were concerned about this statement because this was never mentioned in our meeting with Leicester City Council; there are no glyphosate-based products that are non-toxic. Any products that contain glyphosate are obviously toxic as glyphosate is known to cause cancer. We mentioned further on in the press release, which we had sent to the Leicester Mercury, ‘The journal article that had previously been used to claim that glyphosate was safe was retracted by the publisher last year, because they discovered the company that makes glyphosate had been involved in the research’.

We contacted Leicester City Council to ask who had made the comment, but they did not know. We then contacted the Leicester Mercury to ask where they had got the statement which had been made by ‘a spokesperson for the City Council’.  Eventually it was established by the Mercury that they hadn’t actually spoken to anyone at the Council but had taken an out-of-date statement from Leicester City Council's website and used that in the article.

We asked the Leicester Mercury to print a ‘Clarification’, which they did on Friday May 29^th 2026, but unfortunately, they still did not make it clear where the statement came from. Their clarification read:

‘As set out in the article, a new study discovered that glyphosate is indeed a toxic substance, and the council subsequently agreed to cease its use in children’s play areas as a result.’  

So it still wasn’t actually transparent that they took information from a Council website and didn’t actually speak to anyone from the Council. 

We would also like to mention that Leicester City Council are still spraying the rest of the parks with glyphosate, which is a toxic poison to humans, animals including dogs, insects as well as to the ‘weeds’ which the Council are trying to kill. 

To encourage Leicester City Council to stop using glyphosate in our parks and green spaces, we want to show them that Leicester’s gardeners can mange without pesticides. We have created a pledge which we would love you to sign: Pledge to go pesticide-free.

It’s not too late to make a spring resolution for your garden for 2026. And please do sign even if you’ve been gardening organically for a long time. We are planning to use the postcodes (without linking them to people’s names) to create a map of pesticide-free gardens across the city. Please help!

Melanie Wakley

We celebrate pesticide-free play areas!

We have been celebrating after Leicester City Council agreed to stop spraying herbicide in and around children’s play areas!

As you'll know if you read this blog regularly, we have been campaigning for the city’s parks to go pesticide-free for five years. In that time, the Council have reduced the amount of spraying and they have been looking at alternatives, but they haven't stopped using glyphosate. Towards the end of 2025, we contacted Councillors Geoff Whittle and Vi Dempster to express our concerns about the continued use of glyphosate near to where children are playing. The Global Glyphosate Study, which involves scientists from Europe and the US, found that levels of the chemical previously considered to be 'safe' caused multiple types of cancer in test animals. One of the researchers stated: "The findings from this carefully conducted study...[are] a powerful reminder of human infants’ great vulnerability to toxic chemicals". Children are more vulnerable to pesticide poisoning because their skin is more permeable.

We also shared research showing that glyphosate harms bees’ digestive systems and damages their ability to keep their colonies cool, which can be devastating in our increasingly hot summers.

We met with Councillor Whittle and a council officer in December to explain our concerns about glyphosate endangering Leicester’s children. The journal article that had previously been used to claim that glyphosate was safe was retracted by the publisher last year, because they discovered that the company that makes glyphosate had been involved in the research. As with tobacco and fossil fuels, the companies who make this product have been trying to hide the harm that it is doing.

The City Council took some time to consider our suggestion and then they got in touch in January to let us know they have agreed and will stop spraying in and around the play areas this year. We are delighted that they listened and made this decision - we celebrated with cookies at our last meeting! We hope that they will take this opportunity to leave more wild edges in the city’s green spaces.

We are also encouraging gardeners across Leicestershire to stop spraying, to protect everybody’s health and to help wildlife. You can pledge to go pesticide-free in your garden here. We are planning to create a map of pesticide-free gardens using the postcodes of those who have taken the pledge.

Launch of our pesticide-free garden pledge

The day we have been planning for a while is here - we have launched our pledge for gardeners to go pesticide-free! Pledge to go pesticide-free

Pesticides (including herbicides, insecticides etc), are harmful to human health, wildlife and pets. If you've been reading our blog for a while, you'll know that we've been trying to persuade Leicester City Council to stop using glyphosate in our parks and green spaces for almost five years. They've made some progress in reducing their usage of this harmful chemical, but they are still spraying. We want to show them that Leicester's gardeners can manage without pesticides, so they should too! Can you help us by signing our pledge? It's not too late to make a new year's resolution for 2026. The thank you email has some advice on how to look after your garden without using chemicals. And please do sign even if you've been gardening organically for a long time. We are planning to use the postcodes (without linking them to people's names) to create a map of pesticide-free gardens across the city. If you're able to share with local friends and family after signing, that would help us to collect more pledges.

Pet tick, flea and worm treatments

 Cat and dog owners routinely treat their pets for tick, flea and worm prevention, often throughout the year, but have you stopped to consider where the chemicals in these treatments end up?  Needless to say they end up in the environment, and in us.

There are five common chemicals used in these treatments that end up in the environment that are not certified for agricultural use, yet they have a perpetual licence for use, so no routine way to revoke it.  The table below, extracted from a Pesticide Action Network website details the chemicals and impacts involved.

It makes no sense to ban chemicals from agricultural use but allow them to leach into the environment via our pets. There are over 300 alternative products that do not use these chemicals, so the next time you purchase, or are offered by your vet, a tick, flea or worm treatment, please check the label and look for/request an alternative if it contains one of the chemicals above. 

We can treat our pets safely and protect ourselves and the environment.

Technical notes:

• An ectoparaciticide is an antiparasitic drug (usually a ‘spot-on’ treatment) used to kill parasites that live on the body’s surface (such as ticks and fleas).
• An endectocide is an antiparasitic drug (usually in tablet form) used to kill parasites that live both inside the body (such as worms) and on the body’s surface (such as fleas).
• An endocrine disruptor interferes with hormone systems and can cause birth defects, developmental disorders and reproductive problems such as infertility.

Has your dog been ill?

When we talk about pesticides we tend to focus on the harm to flora and fauna (especially pollinators) followed by the impact on human health.  But there’s another group that are impacted that we tend to forget: our dogs and cats. 

Just as our children are in contact with pesticides as they make contact with sprayed areas, so are our dogs and cats. Children playing on the ground can easily make contact with sprayed areas but our pets have no choice: by walking on the ground they are bound to make contact.  Symptoms of acute pesticide poisoning (single incident exposure) in cats and dogs can include vomiting, diarrhoea, drooling, irritation to the skin or eyes, chemical burns, breathing problems, lethargy, disorientation, seizures and even death. While instances of acute pet poisoning are sometimes studied and recorded, there is almost no research on the long-term, chronic effects on pets’ health of regular, ongoing direct exposure to pesticides that have been linked to diseases in humans such as cancer.

Spraying in our parks and green spaces is exactly where we walk our dogs. We recently heard a case where somebody had tied their dog to the railings around a play area, while they took their child inside where dogs aren’t allowed, then ran up a vet’s bill of over £1,000 when the dog fell ill.  The area along the railings had been sprayed.  There has even been a case of a dog dying after lying on a sprayed area and ingesting the poison through its skin.

Making the connection between pets falling ill and pesticide use is in its infancy. The Veterinary Poisons Information Service (VPIS) has recorded a 55% increase in pesticide related poisoning enquiries between 2019 and 2021, but this is only through voluntary contact with the VPIS, so the issue is likely to be much greater.

The lessons to be learnt from this are:        

• Keep your dog away from sprayed areas and especially don’t tie your dog up where it can make contact with a sprayed area.
• If your dog does fall ill with any of the symptoms above and you suspect poisoning visit the VPIS website to get advice.
• Be aware this can affect cats too and as we have no control of where they go outside we have no way of controlling pesticide exposure to cats.
• If you take your dog or cat to the vet and poisoning is suspected, please ask the vet to report it to the VPIS – we need more data.  Vet membership of the VPIS is only £8/month.
• Don’t spray your garden.
• If you get the opportunity to stop the council spraying on the areas outside where you live, please take it.
• If you take your dog across the fields try and avoid sprayed areas.  Farmers often spray round field edges and some crops are sprayed too if the crop has been specially developed to resist pesticide spraying.  Look for the tell-tale tractor wheelings through crops that indicate the passage of a spraying vehicle or brown grass round field edges.
• Be wary of footpaths through crops where the footpath has been cleared of the crop by spraying.
• Don’t let your dog drink from puddles and ponds near sprayed areas.
• If you see spraying taking place try and keep upwind of it and better still avoid the area altogether - for your health too!

Please join Leicester Friends of the Earth in pressing your council not to spray in public parks and green spaces.

A Buzzing in the Park

The sun shone and the afternoon buzzed with the sound of bees…. wait a minute…that was the sound of human bees! Well humans dressed as bees!

It was Friends of the Earths annual summer picnic and get together to celebrate our year of work and what better way to celebrate than to celebrate the life of bees and how we need to protect them. So, we decided to have a picnic in Humberstone Park – dressing-up as bees was optional.

We have spent the last year working again on our pesticide project – trying to get Leicester City Council to stop spraying parks and green spaces with glyphosate.

The Global Glyphosate Study that concluded this year was a multi-national study on the effects of glyphosate and the results were even worse than feared: there is no safe level of exposure to glyphosate when it comes to human health, with the risk of multiple types of cancer and DNA damage.  Also, the GM crops that have been developed to resist glyphosate have also been shown to have an impact on human health.  Our latest approach is to highlight the impact on pet health while we wait for the public consultation on the renewing of the glyphosate licence in December 2026. 

The family friendly picnic was well supported. Families brought food to share, children and adults dressed in bee costumes and made paper flowers to take home with them. We also had a huge Rainforest picture for people to colour in to think about the current national campaign, “Planet over Profit”, where we are asking the government to bring in a law to make companies avoid harm to people and planet in their supply chains.

It was a lovely day – a celebration of everyone’s hard work, then everyone can have a well-earned rest ready for the next round of work persuading Leicester City Council to stop spraying the same as Lewes, Cowes, Trafford, Cambridge and many others and keep its environmental status as an environmental city that cares about nature and wants to help save our pollinators.

Time to listen Leicester City Council?

Earthmover award for our pesticides campaign

At the recent regional gathering, we were delighted to receive an Earthmovers award from national Friends of the Earth for our pesticides campaign! They remarked that it was awarded for, "A determined, inspiring, long-term pesticides campaign - innovative, fun and engaging tactics, rigorous research and policy background and persistent ongoing political lobbying". We were very grateful for the recognition!

Alison gave a short presentation about our campaign and received the certificate from Richard Dyer, our regional campaigner.

Bee Picnic

We held our ‘Bee-Picnic’ a week later than originally planned due to a rain storm on Bank Holiday Monday – well it was a Bank Holiday after all, what else would you expect? - causing us to postpone. 

The Saturday after was a beautiful sunny day and everyone had a lovely time sitting out on the grass next to a flowerbed of pansies eating their bee friendly picnics. The event was organized to promote our ongoing campaign to persuade the City Council to stop using herbicides, which are a threat to biodiversity and a danger to human health, particularly that of children; and to raise awareness of the damage done by pesticide use more generally, to try to encourage schools, businesses and private individuals to stop using them.

A recent study found that populations of flying insects in the UK had fallen by 60% between 2004 and 2021, (1) and by a further 18% by 2023 (2).  This is a decline that has been ongoing since the 1970s.  This has major implications for food security as many of our crops rely on insects to pollinate them; and major implications for biodiversity, with many insect species threatened with extinction and knock on effects further up the food chain amongst other species, such as many birds.  Insects are suffering from both direct poisoning and loss of habitat.

Interestingly, in the park, opposite to where we were sitting Leicester City Council had a notice board about the value of bees to biodiversity with ideas as to how we can help to protect bees. They didn’t mention on the board that they themselves are spraying in their parks to keep them ‘tidy’ and helping to cause the decline of bees!! 

The impact of herbicide use on human health is also a major concern, since there is evidence of exposure to many common herbicides having long-term health implications.  Many have been identified as potential carcinogens, and there is also evidence of them causing liver damage, and of them increasing the likelihood of someone developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease (3), with young children at particular risk of exposure in urban areas, due to the way that herbicides are used by councils in areas such as parks particularly when children’s play areas are sprayed. 

As some councils have already gone pesticide free (4), and are allowing hard to mow areas to remain wild and adopting alternatives where some control of wild plants is needed, for instance on pavements (5), to protect both biodiversity and their citizens, we wonder why Leicester City Council cannot  follow their examples and stop spraying our parks and green spaces in particular. 

The picnic was a great success with people wearing Bee costumes and at the end taking part in a ‘bee die-in’ as a photo opportunity to forward to the Council to further our request for no more spraying and keeping our children and bees safe. 

We are planning another event later in the year so look out for that if you would like to take part! 

*Updated 13th May 2025

Our press release on this event was covered in the Leicester Gazette and the Northern Eco. The reporter from the Northern Eco, Sarah Hartley, had contacted Hannah Wakley from Leics. FoE before the picnic to learn more about the campaign as she is bringing together people campaigning against pesticide use across the UK and has set up a WhatsApp group. Hannah noticed that Leicester City Council had claimed, in their response to the press release, that glyphosate is certified by the Soil Association. She pointed out to Sarah that this is completely untrue and in fact the Soil Association have been campaigning for glyphosate to be banned for years! Sarah went back to the City Council, they admitted that it is only the adjuvant that is certified and she has now published a correction. 

Careful Leicester City Council we are watching you!!  

References

(1) Wildlife experts urge action on pesticides as UK insect populations plummet | Insects | The Guardian

(2) Bugs Matter Citizen Science survey shows further decreases in UK insect numbers - Buglife latest news

(3) Childhood exposure to common herbicide may increase the risk of disease in young adulthood

(4) Pesticide-Free Towns - success stories - Pesticide Action Network UK

(5) Tackling weeds without the use of pesticides - Pesticide Action Network UK

Taking our pesticides concerns to City Council scrutiny committee

We've been struggling to talk to councillors and officers about our concerns around the use of pesticides in parks, so we have submitted a statement to the Culture and Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Commission and we will be attending their meeting next week, on Monday 4th November at 5:30 pm at City Hall. Here's our statement in full:

"Leicester Friends of the Earth have been discussing the council's use of chemical pesticides in the parks with officers and councillors for the past three years. After trialling a different product last year, the council returned to using glyphosate in parks this year, albeit at a lower concentration than previously used. The council's target for pesticide use in the Biodiversity Action Plan is to reduce it by 50% by 2030. We think that target is disappointingly unambitious when other local authorities have already moved away from chemical pesticides altogether. The Pesticide Action Network provide detailed information for local authorities on how to go pesticide free on their website. 

The areas that are sprayed in the parks do seem to have been reduced in the last couple of years - we can no longer see any sign of spraying around tree bases in parks, for example, which is an improvement. (Tree bases on road verges are still being sprayed, sadly.) But we are still seeing signs of spraying around and within children's play areas, which is concerning when it is known that children are more vulnerable to the effects of chemical pesticides than adults. I notice this in my local park in Evington, which makes me nervous about taking my nephew there. Like all toddlers, he likes to play with the soil and I spend a lot of time carrying him away from the sprayed, dead grass around the edges of the patches of woodchip and under the fence. Many people will not recognise what this dead grass means, so they will not be able to protect their children from being exposed to the pesticide residues there. 

We are concerned about the use of any chemical pesticides, and glyphosate in particular, for a number of reasons. There have been several studies linking glyphosate to cancers in people, particularly non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The research was collated in a meta-analysis published in the academic journal Mutation Research in 2019. Children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of pesticides, because their skin absorbs chemicals more easily and because they are more likely to be playing on the ground. The evidence for the ill-effects of glyphosate on bees and other wildlife has also been mounting over the last few years. It is now known that glyphosate harms bees’ digestive systems, for example, affecting their ability to absorb food, and also damages the ability of wild bees to regulate the temperature of their colonies. When insect populations are falling so alarmingly, we do not believe we should be doing anything to make the situation worse. 

Leicester has long claimed to be the UK's first environment city, but on this issue, it is clear that we are not taking the lead. In fact, we are falling far behind other towns and cities."

After we've read the statement, the members of the committee will discuss and we might be given the opportunity to ask a follow-up question, depending on the chair. We are preparing for this and will make sure we have some research to share at our fingertips.

If you're free next Monday, we'd love to have more people observing this meeting. Councillors will notice if people care enough about the issue to come to the meeting. You'll only be able to watch and listen, but just being there will make a difference. This item is first on the agenda and we can leave afterwards, so you'd probably only need to stay for 30 minutes. Please come if you can! We'll meet outside City Hall on Charles Street at 5:15 pm and go in together. 

Our questions to Leicester's General Election candidates

As the General Election approaches, we've put together a survey to ask Leicester's candidates three questions about key environmental issues. If you're still undecided about who to vote for and if you care about the environment, their answers might help! Here are our questions and the answers we've received so far:

1. The High Court has ruled the government's existing climate plans are unlawful and ordered the government to write a new one. How will you ensure the new climate plan delivers action that shares the costs and benefits fairly?

Rahoul Naik, One Leicester (Leicester West)

"I think the ruling from the High Court earlier this year shows how inadequate the Government's proposals and thinking around advancing to net-zero and reducing carbon emissions are and continue to be. It has been disappointing to see the Labour Party's position change too often with investment reduction in the billions. If elected, I will work with parties across the government to fight for a climate plan that is realistic, progressive and focussed on delivering for the country. We must ensure that any climate plan puts people first. That means, focussing on reducing energy bills, increasing infrastructure for electric vehicles, continued incentives for transition to air source heat pumps and solar panels. There is a lot we can do and learn from our European neighbours, there just has not been the political will to do so. This has to be led for the people, brokering relationships with businesses but ultimately for the sake of the planet."

Mags Lewis, Green Party (Leicester East)

"By working with legislators, climate experts and groups, to ensure rhetoric and ambitions regarding climate degradation are underpinned by law and enforced."

Aasiya Bora, Green Party (Leicester West)

"Our Climate plan will:  

- Introduce a new Rights of Nature Act, giving Nature rights itself. 

- End the scandal of sewage pouring into our rivers, including our beloved River Soar; water companies will be back in public ownership.

- Extend people’s access to green space and waterways close to where they live with a new English Right to Roam Act.

- Set aside 30% of our land and seas by 2030 in which nature will receive the highest priority and protection.

Our wealth tax on those with assets of £10 million or more will help to pay for it. We want grant funding for businesses to decarbonise annually. These would be targeted at small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), which account for around half of the UK’s private sector emissions.

A Green government would additionally set up regional mutual banks to help drive investment in initiatives which create local jobs in the green economy."

2. Leicester has very high levels of poverty. This has worsened due to rising energy prices. Home insulation reduces the energy needed to heat a home, and therefore a household’s energy costs. It also reduces the carbon emissions causing climate change. If you are elected as an MP, will you support a government funded, nationwide, street by street, home insulation programme? What will you do to work for this and ensure that your constituents benefit from such an insulation programme? (This question comes from our partners, Climate Action Leicester and Leicestershire.)

Rahoul Naik, One Leicester (Leicester West)

"I think it is a great travesty that so many people are living in poverty in Leicester and particularly in Leicester West. Many of these people work, but are in such low paid jobs that they are unable to make ends meet. There is a strong case for the link between carbon emission reduction and ending poverty in the UK. Home insulation is part of that solution and I would definitely back a funded nationwide plan that would bring the benefits of lower carbon emissions, warmer homes and lower bills to all in the UK. I would be a leading voice in the fight for this in Parliament and ensure that Leicester West is used as a beacon of hope for this programme and get the ball rolling further right here in Leicester."

Mags Lewis, Green Party (Leicester East)

"Yes, this is party policy. We will also end the two child benefit cap, lifting thousands of Leicester children out of poverty."

Aasiya Bora, Green Party (Leicester West)

"Elected Greens will push for a local-authority-led, street-by-street retrofit programme to insulate our homes, provide clean heat and start to adapt our buildings to more extreme climate conditions. This would mean investment to: - insulate homes to an EPC B standard or above as part of a ten-year programme. - insulate other buildings to a high standard - provide low-carbon heating systems (e.g. heat pumps) for homes and other buildings."

3. France has banned the use of pesticides in public spaces, to protect people and biodiversity. Would you support a ban on urban pesticide use in the UK, to make our parks and green spaces safe for people and more wildlife-friendly?

Rahoul Naik, One Leicester (Leicester West)

"Yes, I would support a ban on urban pesticide use and I'm sure, like in France, it would be a success and this could be extended further than just public spaces. We have a biodiversity crisis in the UK with many regions working on Nature Recovery Strategies as we have seen a serious decline in UK species and a upward trend of nature loss. I think we have to look strategically at how we can improve and increase biodiversity again in the UK and it starts with game-changing policies like the ban on pesticide use in public spaces."

Mags Lewis, Green Party (Leicester East)

"Yes, as it causes health issues for humans animals and wildlife flora and fauna- our bees are precious!"

Aasiya Bora, Green Party (Leicester West)

"The Green Party wants an immediate end to the emergency authorisation of bee-killing pesticides. Leicester West has many many gardens and school grounds which have been paved over which aren't even being used for car parking. A pilot guided education programme on the importance of bee friendly bushes and cultivating green spaces in our urban areas will help with creating more habitats for our bees."

Survey reveals love of parks in Leicester

We have spent the last few months analysing the data we collected in our park users survey last summer and the results are clear: people in Leicester love their parks.

We questioned 157 people using seven medium-sized parks in Leicester: Appleton, Willowbrook, Stokeswood, Evington, Hamilton, Humberstone and Spinney Hill Park (the same parks we were assessing for our nature-friendly park award). The majority visited their local park at least once a week, with many people visiting every day. The people interviewed were broadly representative of Leicester’s population, with 49% female and 46% male, a range of ages from 16-75+ and 52% of Asian heritage. 

People were asked to name the four things they liked best about their park and aspects of nature were mentioned most often - greenery, trees, water sources and wildlife. 

The parks provide people with access to nature and greenery, in contrast to their urban surroundings. We know that having access to nature is important for people’s physical and mental health. People felt that the parks are open, friendly, peaceful places. They are drawn to them for exercise but also to watch wildlife and relax. 

The City Council use chemical pesticides as part of their management of the parks, to control vegetation. We asked people how they felt about that and over two thirds (68%) were opposed to it. They were opposed to the use of pesticides in principle and felt they damage the environment and cause harm to wildlife and people. A majority of interviewees (85%) supported the Council using more natural methods. 

We’d like to see the Council listen to people’s views and stop using these harmful chemicals in Leicester’s parks and green spaces. People go to their parks to connect with nature. More wild plants mean more insects, more birds and more life! 

The survey also revealed that people want the Council to develop the parks with more information provision and more support for wildlife, with things like bird and bat boxes. 

The full report and the appendices are both available to download. 

Climate Emergency Action Plan consultation - respond now!

Leicester City Council are currently consulting on their new Climate Emergency Action Plan, which will cover the next five years until 2028. The consultation is open until Sunday 28^th January 2024 and you can read the consultation documents here. We are writing a detailed response from Leicester Friends of the Earth but it will have more impact if as many people and organisations as possible respond to the consultation. You can complete a survey at the link above or simply send an email to sustainability@leicester.gov.uk with your thoughts.

Here are our suggestions for the key points to include:

------------------------------------------------------------

Although there are many good actions included in the new plan, there are also too many points without any defined targets, so that there is no way of measuring whether the Council is making progress towards reaching net zero by 2030. There are also too many ‘actions’ listed which are in fact only plans to make plans. These are not actions and should not be listed as such.

The Council

The Council recognises that the most impactful actions they could take to reduce the carbon emissions of their own buildings are to retrofit insulation, install heat pumps and connect more buildings to the district heating networks. However, insulation and connections to district heating are not mentioned in the actions listed in this section. There is only a plan to make a plan! Why not start trying to fund those projects immediately, while creating the roadmap? When we are facing a climate emergency, we haven’t got two years to waste in only writing the plan.

Housing

The ongoing programme of insulating council homes is good but nowhere near ambitious enough. There needs to be a target to retrofit all council owned and managed homes, as well as a target to get all homes in the private rented sector up to standard. We would also like to understand what more will be done to encourage privately owned homes to retrofit, as they make up a significant proportion of the city’s housing stock.   

Business, public services and community

The tree planting and Tiny Forests projects happening on school grounds are excellent but they could be more ambitious; aiming to plant five more Tiny Forests by 2028 is only one per year! Could the Council aim to plant a Tiny Forest at every school that has sufficient green space within the next 5 years? That would be a significant number of trees and ensure that most children in Leicester had access to a Tiny Forest.

Transport

To make active travel more attractive we need to find ways of reducing traffic levels, so that it is safer to walk and cycle. One of the key factors driving increases in road traffic is light goods vehicles, driven by online shopping.  This is recognised in government statistics but not addressed in this plan (apart from with a plan to make a plan!). More urgent action is needed. For example, the Council could work with online retailers to install more parcel lockers around the city so that deliveries could be dropped at one point for people to collect.

Land and infrastructure

The glyphosate reduction trials in city parks are welcome but we would like to see this expanded. It is possible to manage parks and green spaces without using any chemical pesticides (herbicides, insecticides etc). Other local authorities are also managing their streets without using chemical pesticides and we would like to see the Council follow this best practice and phase out the use of all pesticides in the next five years.

Consumption and waste

The Council state that food waste is being separated from other household waste. How is this done? And is it as effective as a separate food waste collection would be? We are concerned that this is not the most effective way to manage household waste.

It is good to see that the Council intends to increase the choice of meals in schools, to address the climate impact of food. This should apply to all institutional settings, including hospitals, care homes and prisons, not only schools. Vegan options of similar nutritional value to other meal options should be made available for every meal.

Survey - tell us your views about your local park!

We've now completed our visits to the seven Leicester parks we are considering for the nature-friendly park award. We are going through all the information we have collected and writing up a report for the City Council, which will include some analysis of the questionnaires we conducted in the parks. If you didn't manage to come to any of our stalls, you can still share your views by completing the online version of the questionnaire here. 

Campaign video about pavement spraying

We have recently been lucky enough to work with students from Leicester College to put together a video about the spraying of pavements with glyphosate. We think this is a harmful practice and there are much better solutions - leave the wild plants alone and create more space for wildlife, or remove them with a wire brush when absolutely necessary. Check out our finished video here. 

Our schedule of park visits for Friday evening surveys and Saturday afternoon stalls

To give an award to the most nature-friendly park, we need to assess their current state and survey people who use the park. This is our schedule for visiting each of the parks:   

	Fridays (evening visits looking at habitats)	Saturdays (stalls with questionnaire)
Hamilton	5th May	6th May
Evington	12th May	13th May
Spinney Hills	19th May	20th May
Willowbrook	26th May	27th May
Humberstone	9th June	10th June
Stokes Wood	16th June	17th June
Appleton	30th June	1st July
Reserve	7th July	8th July

Friday evenings in May will start at 7:30pm and in June at 8pm. We will be starting later in June as we are aiming to check bat populations so we need the twilight to arrive for them to come out.  

Our Saturday afternoon stalls will start at 3pm. We are aiming to survey park users while we entertain their children by making wildflower "seed bombs".

If you can spare the time to join us in any of the parks, especially if you are knowledgeable about an aspect of wildlife and can come along on a Friday evening, you would be very welcome to join us!

Leicester's parks go glyphosate-free!

We were recently very excited to hear that the City Council have decided to stop using glyphosate in parks and green spaces from January 2023!

As you know if you've been following us, we have been campaigning for the city’s parks to go pesticide-free since 2021. We contacted the City Council to express our concerns about the use of this poison and pointed out that exposure to pesticides has been linked to many health issues, including cancers, Alzheimer’s and infertility. We also shared research showing that glyphosate harms bees’ digestive systems and damages their ability to keep their colonies cool, which can be devastating in our increasingly hot summers.

We spent several months on the streets explaining our concerns to the public and gathering support. In July, we presented a petition of 1057 signatures asking the City Council to stop using pesticides in parks and green spaces. We then attended the Neighbourhoods Services Scrutiny Commission meeting in August and asked the councillors and officers to reconsider their spraying policy.

The City Council have now responded to the petition, confirming that they will stop using glyphosate in parks and green spaces from January 2023, on a trial basis. They are working with Pesticide Action Network to develop a pesticide action plan. 

We would like to thank Adam Clarke and the council officers in the parks department for listening to our concerns. The vast majority of people we spoke to during our campaign were opposed to the use of pesticides in the city. Many parents in particular will be relieved that they don’t have to avoid sprayed areas when taking their children to the park.

Leicester has always rightly been proud of its status as the UK’s First Environment City and the Biodiversity Action Plan states that the Council aim to 'make sure that local biodiversity thrives'. We congratulate the Council on taking an important step towards that aim. We hope that they will take this opportunity to leave more wild edges in the city’s green spaces. There has been a catastrophic decline in insect and wild plant species in the UK, so we need to make space for nature in cities. We also hope that they will reconsider the use of glyphosate in other places, like school grounds and pavements.

This story was covered by the BBC and the Leicester Mercury. We celebrated the campaign win at our September meeting with tea and cookies!

Pesticides petition presented to City Council

We presented our petition asking the City Council to stop using pesticides in parks and green spaces last night (Thursday 7th July), to the full council meeting. Between the paper and online petitions, we had a total of 1057 signatures, of which 690 were verified as having city postcodes. Unfortunately, this left us short of our target of 750 verified signatures, which would have required a senior officer to respond to a public meeting. However, the Council still have to respond and we will be able to continue the conversation with them.

We had been told before the meeting that we would be able to speak for 5 minutes in lieu of reading the petition text, so we had prepared some key points to explain our campaign. We were then told at the meeting that we could only read the petition text. However, as we had already prepared our speech, we have emailed it to all the councillors instead. You can read our summary below.

We'll update you here and on our social media when we get a response!

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On behalf of Leicester Friends of the Earth, I wish to present our petition as printed on the script, asking the City Council to stop using pesticides in parks and green spaces. The City Council say that you are minimising the use of the herbicide glyphosate but we still see unnecessary spraying around trees, fences and even rocks in the city’s parks.

 

There have been a number of studies linking glyphosate to cancers in people, particularly non-Hodgkin lymphoma. This research was collated in a meta-analysis published in the academic journal Mutation Research in 2019 and I can provide the link to that for anyone who would like to read it. Children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of pesticides, because their skin absorbs chemicals more easily and because they are more likely to be playing on the ground. And yet when we visited Humberstone Park recently, glyphosate had been used principally around the children’s play area.

 

The evidence for the ill-effects of glyphosate on bees and other wildlife has also been mounting over the last few years. It is now known that glyphosate harms bees’ digestive systems, for example, affecting their ability to absorb food. Councillors may also have read the recent article in the Guardian about glyphosate damaging the ability of wild bees to regulate the temperature of their colonies. We were therefore particularly disappointed to see that the seeded section of the 'Bee Road' meadow strip on Goodwood Road has recently been sprayed with glyphosate. The RSPB’s Pesticides and Wildlife Report explains that the combination of chemicals that all living creatures are exposed to, known as the cocktail effect, can cause more harm than any single chemical. The cocktail effect is not tested as part of the approval process for pesticides but research is now starting to reveal the extremely harmful effects of combinations of these chemicals.

 

We have been out on the streets collecting signatures for this petition over the past few months. The vast majority of people we have spoken to are opposed to the use of pesticides in the city and many have expressed surprise and dismay that they are still being used. Leicester has always rightly been proud of its status as the UK’s First Environment City, but on this issue, we are not leading. Forty-three local authorities in the UK have already banned all pesticides or committed to phasing them out in the near future. Cambridge, for example, banned the use of herbicides in the parks and green spaces in 2019 and are aiming to stop all herbicide spraying in the city by the end of this year.

 

The City Council’s Biodiversity Action Plan states that the Council aim to 'make sure that local biodiversity thrives'. We applaud that aim – with the catastrophic decline in insect and wild plant species in the UK, it is absolutely necessary to make space for nature in cities. However, biodiversity cannot thrive in places that have been sprayed with poison. 

We ask the City Council to reconsider their policy. Thank you.  

Exposure to glyphosate-based herbicides and risk for non-Hodgkin lymphoma: A meta-analysis and supporting evidence - ScienceDirect

Glyphosate weedkiller damages wild bee colonies, study reveals | Bees | The Guardian

Information for local authorities - Pesticide Action Network UK (pan-uk.org)

Pesticides campaign update and Freedom of Information request

If you follow us on Facebook or Twitter, you’re probably aware that we are planning to present our petition asking the City Council to stop spraying pesticides in the parks to the full council meeting on Thursday 7^th July. We’re trying to collect as many signatures as possible in the last few weeks. If we reach 750 signatures of people who live, work or study in Leicester, a senior council officer will be called to a public meeting to respond.

Thank you to everyone who has signed and shared it recently – the petition has grown significantly in the last fortnight so it’s working! If you haven’t signed and shared yet, there is still time. We’ll also be having one last street stall to collect paper signatures on Saturday 25^th June, on the edge of Victoria Park.

As part of our research for this campaign, we submitted a Freedom of Information request to the City Council to find out more about their use of pesticides on pavements over the last three years. We were particularly interested in this time period, as we saw more wild plants in the streets in 2020 and early 2021.

We asked the frequency with which the pavements were sprayed with pesticides in 2019, 2020 and 2021 and the chemicals that were used. They responded:

2019

Number of treatments - 3

Commenced – 08.04.19, 08.07.19, 14.09.19

Chemical – Glyphosate (this is a herbicide, designed to kill plants but known to have other effects as well – see below).

2020

Number of treatments - 1

Period - April - Oct

Chemical – Glyphosate, No mix

2021

Number of treatments - 3

Commenced – 17.05.21, 26.07.21, 03.10.21

Chemical – Glyphosate, Rosate adjuvant

We also asked if they could tell us the number of reported trips and falls due to ‘weeds’ in the pavements in the same years. They responded:

Number of reported weed concerns:

2019 – 13

2020 – 56

2021 – 17

Number of reported trips and falls:

2019 – 4

2020 – 2

2021 – 0

We found these numbers interesting, because it seems to show that having more wild plants in the pavements (as there were in 2020 and early 2021) doesn’t lead to more trips and falls. On the other hand, the increase in wild plant diversity and abundance was very apparent. Two local botanists came to our May meeting and told us that in 2020, they recorded 361 species of wild plant on 20 streets in Leicester. They found a similar number when they surveyed a comparable area of unimproved natural habitat. Cities don’t have to be botanical deserts. In fact, left alone, nature can thrive in a city. We just need to give it the chance.

The City Council seem to be more concerned about the complaints they receive about ‘weedy’ pavements. And yet, many of us are worried about the use of glyphosate in the city, especially when we see the evidence that it is linked to cancer in humans and harms wild bee colonies. Therefore, if you’ve signed our petition and you are wondering what to do next, we encourage you to write to your councillors and complain about the use of herbicides in Leicester. You can use the Write To Them website to easily find your councillors and send them an email. You don’t have to be an expert – just explain why you are worried. But if you would like more information to quote in your email, Pesticide Action Network have some useful information here. And if your councillors respond, we’d love to know! Forward us any responses you receive to help us plan the next steps of the campaign: leicesterfoe@gmail.com

May meeting: Urban biodiversity presentation

At our May meeting, we welcomed Russell Parry and Lindsay-Anne, who had come to share their enthusiasm for wild plants (N.B. not ‘weeds’!) in urban areas. You can see their slides here and below is a brief summary of their presentation.

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Data from NatureSpot, a species recording website, shows that the highest levels of biodiversity in Leicestershire are found in the city and towns and the lowest in farmland. The pesticides and fertilisers used in agriculture are turning fields into green deserts, with very low diversity. Seeing plants and green places is essential to human health and happiness; many psychology studies have now demonstrated this.

There has been an alarming decline in insects over the past few decades. This is made very clear by the ‘windscreen phenomenon’ – car windscreens are no longer covered in squashed insects after long journeys. A German study found that there has been a 50% decline in insects in 20 years. Insects rely on wild plants for food and a place to lay their eggs. More wild plants = provide more habitat for insects.

Russell has conducted a bird survey along the same route in Birstall for the past 25 years. He finds that there is less species diversity and abundance on the golf course and more along the roads with gardens. More plants = more insects = more birds.

The City Council routinely sprays the pavements in Leicester with herbicide to kill all wild plants. In 2020, with the lockdowns, they only sprayed once. In that year and the following spring, there was an astonishing abundance of urban wild plants. But then they resumed spraying three times a year and the pavement wild plants have disappeared again. Lindsay-Anne saw a similar situation in Enderby. A recent article in the RSPB magazine concluded that the best way to deal with ‘weeds’ is to allow them to flourish.

The abundance of 2020 inspired Russell and Lindsay-Anne to start the StreetWild project. They planned to ask people to go 200 yards from their house and look for common plants. They would provide people with a guide to recognising five plants currently in flower every month. The Wildlife Trust and the City Council were interested in promoting this. However, when the pavement spraying resumed, the project had to be abandoned.

In 2020, Russell and Lindsay-Anne recorded 361 species of wild plant on 20 streets in Leicester and found a similar number when they surveyed unimproved natural habitat. Lindsay-Anne found Jersey Cudweed in Enderby, a schedule 8 plant (meaning it should not be touched) and the first record of this plant in Leicestershire. She reported it to the District Council, but when the spraying resumed, it was still sprayed.

The City Council’s Biodiversity Action Plan includes some excellent intentions, including: ‘We will make sure that local biodiversity thrives.’ However, they are not acting on these.

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This gave us some new ideas for how to progress our pesticides campaign!

It's time to love our weeds!

We organised a walk starting from Jubilee Square today to encourage people to appreciate the wild plants growing in the city.

The walk was led by local botanists, Mike Pepper and Ann Branson. Approximately 20 people attended and we learnt to recognise wild plants like ragwort, cranesbill, white deadnettle, bird’s-foot trefoil, knapweed and cow parsley. We wrote the names of the plants in chalk on the path, so that people following the same route later would be able to learn the names of the plants too.

A survey has found that the number of flying insects has dropped 60% since 2004 in the UK. Life on Earth depends on insects and insects need wild plants for food and shelter. However, in Leicester, pavements, parks and green spaces are routinely sprayed with glyphosate weedkiller, killing all wild plants. Leicester Friends of the Earth have a petition asking the City Council to stop using weedkiller in parks and green spaces. They are planning to present it in a few weeks.

Given the vital role that insects play in our ecosystems, and the importance of nature in helping to tackle the climate emergency, it is essential that the Council stops spraying substances that are so harmful. A single application of a pesticide can remain in the soil for three years. They affect the whole plant, including its pollen and nectar, which means they are taken up by pollinators such as bees.

Research has also linked exposure to pesticides to many health issues, including cancers, Alzheimer’s, asthma, diabetes and infertility. In 2020 the manufacturer of glyphosate paid out over $10 billion to settle lawsuits with people who developed cancer as a result of using their product. Children are particularly vulnerable to pesticide poisoning because their skin is more permeable and they spend more time playing close to the ground.

There are so many reasons to stop using these chemicals. We need more space for wildlife in our city. More plants mean more insects, more birds, more life!