Clearing Autumn Leaves

With around 36,000 trees lining our streets, preventing pavements and roads becoming slippery and messy from fallen leaves is a crucial but difficult business to deal with.

The council’s street cleaning contractor is now on standby, ready to react to the changing weather-related leaf-fall patterns, mindful too, of different leaf-fall patterns associated with different tree species. The clearance programme is compiled from data collected on street trees - such as species, period of leaf-drop and volume expected to fall - and focuses on the top priorities with extra crews and vehicles being brought in as the season progresses. The height of the season presents the greatest challenge through the sheer volume of leaves falling at once and these are systematically collected as crews work through their programmes.

Roads with trees that shed their leaves early in the season and in large numbers will be timed for collection first, while those that loose their leaves at a later stage will be collected further into the season. Street Friends help too by bagging up leaves from roads and pavements ready for them to collect. You can help too by clearing the grids, kerb sides and pavements. The council can give you purple plastic sacks to collect the leaves. You can leave the purple sacks near the kerb by a lamp column. Please ensure they don’t cause a tripping hazard or obstruction, though. The council’s contractor will collect them on the next working day if you give details of exactly where you have left them by phoning our plastic sack hotline, 020 8308 9183.

Residents can also help by not sweeping leaves from their gardens, drives or pathways into the road, as leaves not removed in the first instance may block the road gullies and could cause flooding. If a flood happens you can clear the grid but if the water does not drain away within 20 minutes after rainfall stops, there may be further problems with the gully. Please report this to 020 8313 4557. The council should take further action if they think there’s a risk to pedestrians or road users.

To become a street friend and there is an application form at the following link:-

http://www.bromley.gov.uk/downloads/file/320/street_friends_application_form

More information is available at www.bromley.gov.uk/neatstreet .