Council accused of making 'serious hazard' at park

Caroline Dewar said the use of the Norton Nurseries site for waste storage was "unacceptable and illegal"

A park group has accused a council of creating a "serious health and safety hazard" by storing waste, including dog mess, at a disused plant nursery.

The Friends of Graves Park say Sheffield City Council's use of the former Norton Nurseries site is "unacceptable and illegal" and that the authority has ignored its requests to stop.

In a letter to the council, charity chair Caroline Dewar said: "The stench has been incredibly bad during the recent hot weather [and] has to be tolerated by local residents, passers-by, and people working on the site."

Sheffield City Council, which will hear an application to licence the site until November later this week, said it had been looking for another site for its depot operations.

Graves Park is owned by a charitable trust, of which the council is sole trustee.

According to the Charities Act 2011 the use any use of charity-owned land must solely benefit the charity, and not the council.

The Friends of Graves Park is preparing to restore the area currently used as a "dumping ground" and turn it into a woodland garden.

It has already completed restoration of two areas of the nursery site, creating a meadow wildlife area and the first section of an arboretum.

In her letter, Ms Dewar said: "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.

"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."

Around two thirds of the non-grassed area in the image is being used as a council depot

In her letter, which was sent to councillors and MP Louise Haigh, Ms Dewar also raised concerns that some documents had been withheld from public view at a council meeting in June, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

The council said: "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."

A meeting of the council's charity committee on Wednesday will consider granting the depot a licence until the end of November.

A long-term plan for the parks department depot is due to be considered in September.

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