Sheffield park “serious health hazard” allegation over storage of dog dirt and waste
A Sheffield park users’ group has accused Sheffield City Council of creating a “serious health and safety hazard” involving the storage of waste including dog dirt at disused park nurseries.
The Friends of Graves Park have complained about the issue as part of their ongoing fight to have more of Norton Nurseries returned to parkland. The chair of the group, Caroline Dewar, wrote to councillors, council officials and MP Louise Haigh while also raising concerns about a recent council committee meeting, where documents were withheld from public view.
The council’s charity trustee sub-committee is now holding an extraordinary meeting on Wednesday (July 23) to discuss options for the nurseries, which are currently being used as a parks department depot.
The documents are now available to the public as part of the papers for Wednesday’s meeting. They include a letter from the Charity Commission and legal advice from a barrister about actions the council needs to take to ensure that use of the site does not contravene the Charities Act 2011.
This is because any use of charity-owned land must solely benefit the charity, and not the council. The Charity Commission last year told the council that the depot use breaks the law and work is continuing to find alternative sites.
The meeting on Wednesday will consider proposals to grant a short-term licence for the depot until November 30 and decide on long-term options at a meeting in September.
Shocking
Ms Dewar said in her letter: “The other issue being actively ignored by the council officers is the continued use of Norton Nurseries as a waste collection and processing site. Waste, including dog dirt, is being collected from at least 35 other parks and open spaces and dumped at the site, to be sorted and collected at a later date.
“The council officers have already confirmed that they do not have a licence to do this, which is quite shocking. The stench from this practice, which has been incredibly bad during the recent hot weather, has to be tolerated by the local residents and passers-by, as well as people working on the site.
“This is a serious health and safety hazard. We have been requesting that this unacceptable and illegal waste collection be stopped and more suitable alternatives be introduced with immediate effect, but our requests are ignored.
“We now expect this practice to be discontinued, irrespective of decisions about the depot operations.”
The letter was written in response to the council’s version of events centring around a meeting of its charity trustee sub-committee held on June 23. Graves Park is owned by a charitable trust, of which the council is sole trustee, so the committee oversees all issues related to the council’s charitable trusts.
The group say that the answers do not properly relate to the questions that were asked by Ms Dewar at the meeting.
Assurances
The Friends said in one question that in 2024 they were given assurances that, if the glasshouses at the nurseries were brought back into use, this would not adversely affect their “long-standing request to restore the next section of the Norton Nurseries back to parkland”.
They asked whether sub-committee members were aware that the sustainable food group Foodworks, who are now using the glasshouses, had been given part of the area which is earmarked for restoration funded by the Friends to use for parking.
They asked: “Can the sub-committee ensure that council officers are instructed that the car parking must be moved to another area of the site with immediate effect, as once permission is given to start work on the restoration, this site (our arboretum extension) needs to be clear?”
The answer given was that the land is”currently required for parks operations including for maintenance of Graves Park”. It added: “In the event a decision is taken to move part or all operations from Norton Nurseries, and to permit the Friends to begin works on the section referred to, any necessary reconfiguration of use or space would be undertaken.”
The Friends responded: “As Foodworks has only been on the site for a year, this permission has been issued since our attempts to get permission for our restoration and appears to be a cynical move by the council to hold on to the land and prove it is being used for something.
“The previous excuse given by the council was that they needed our arboretum extension to turn round large vehicles, i.e. tractors with trailers (NB Please note, laypeople, these vehicles can only be of a certain size if they are allowed on the public highway, so to imply that they are enormous, unwieldy vehicles is, quite frankly, silly).
Illegal
“Now it would appear it is needed as a car park. It cannot be both and should be neither.
“If the council moved its illegal collection and waste disposal activities off the site, as it should do, it would then have more than enough space on the remaining Norton Nurseries site for storage and manoeuvring.
“This would also benefit the Foodworks and other volunteers, as well as staff, who would no longer have to breathe in the disgusting stench, nor tolerate the vermin attracted by the rubbish being collected there without a licence.”
The Friends rejected the council’s justification for withholding independent legal advice from public view in June. They were told: “The advice is legal advice in respect of how to best advise the trust. It was commissioned by the Monitoring Officer.
“It remains legally privileged so that the committee may understand it.”
The Friends said: “At the meeting, this was called out as the gobbledygook that it is. It is neither factual nor accurate.”
At the meeting, councillors also criticised the decision to restrict the documents.