Over a prolonged period, I have received complaints about the lack of maintenance of the slopes at the west end of Scott Street and on Pentland Avenue - see below :
 |
| Scott Street - west end |
 |
| Pentland Avenue |
I have raised this on numerous occasions with the City Council and the latest update I have received is from the new area environment manager and I am grateful for his helpful response and trust we will now see improvements to the situation here and also to the general grass maintenance of the Pentland area into the future :
"First of all regarding the ground at the top of Scott Street. Due to the steepness of the slope we do not cut the grass as we do not have anything capable that would manage and be legal under Health & Safety regulations. Part of it gets cut with a tractor mounted flail which we hire in, but it can only go so far in from the street, the rest was left to naturalise, but one person's naturalisation can be another person's mess.
This could be something that can be looked at over the winter period to see if we can improve the appearance of the area and I will run a few ideas past our projects team.
The bankings at Pentland Avenue have a similar problem but approached in a different way. We have one machine that can manage to cut the grass on these bankings but it works City Wide. When I made enquiries I discovered that it was in the workshop and will be unlikely to be back in service this week. Depending where they are on their cycle, once it is repaired they should get to Pentland Avenue in no more than a couple of weeks.
I have discovered since taking on the West End that the whole Pentland/Saggar Street area is "challenging" due to the terrain. Our service revisions carried out at this time do not seem to have done us any favours in respect of this area. There is not a great deal we can do now that we are well into the grass cutting season and it would be difficult to change things, but I have already asked our quality and development section look at the grass cutting regimes in this area as I do not want to see the same level of complaints next year as I have had this year."