Chiswick residents fed up with trudging through slippery leaf slush

Compacted leaves in Cllr John Todd’s ward, with a sprinkling of litter mixed in

Piles of rotting leaves “slippery and dangerous”

Hounslow’s Cabinet Member for ‘Infrastructure, recycling and transformation’, Cllr Shivraj Grewal has said he will take urgent action to clear the compacted leaf mulch which is now lining the streets of Chiswick.

The trouble with ‘leafy Chiswick’, as it is so often described by estate agents, is that it is, well, leafy. Lovely in the spring and summer, and in the autumn until the leaves fall.

LB Hounslow announced earlier this year it was having to make cuts in spending across the board.

“We do understand the Council is overloaded and underfunded” one resident told The Chiswick Calendar, “but it’s disgusting, it’s compacted and there’s now litter mixed in. It’s slippery and dangerous.

“Piles of muddy, rotting leaves are heaped up all along our streets. We have a lot of older people in our road who can’t come out and clear the leaves themselves.

“We have been collecting them up in big piles, and the Council’s team did come along a they did a bit, but then they were called away on another job. We just want it done”.

Cllr John Todd

Some roads not scheduled to be cleared until February

The Council had fallen behind on its published leaf clearance schedule, she told us. The resident, who preferred not to be named, lives in Cllr John Todd’s ward Homefields, on the east side of Chiswick.

All the councillors are being inundated with complaints about it, he told me. One woman in his ward said her 87-year-old mother with dementia and limited mobility was particularly put at risk trying to navigate the slippery slush.

“The complaints are from numerous residents who’ve clearly met and discussed it in exasperation of the ongoing mess and lack of Council action.

“A resident in Gunnersbury ward has seen no leaf clearance in November, and there is no evidence of LBH giving notice of clearance, so cars can’t be moved”.

It was Cllr Todd’s email to Cllr Grewal pointing out that he had told the borough Council meeting the leaf clearance was going well, and this was not the case, that elicited the Cabinet Member’s response:

‘These avenues are leaf jammed”, wrote John. “Action please.”

“Thanks for bringing this to my notice shall get it done ASAP”, replied Cllr Grewal.

John also raised it with Council Leader Cllr Shantanu Rajawat:

‘Your Cabinet colleague told the Council the schedule from Hounslow Highways was up to date. It’s not, and residents are suffering and the elderly are at risk. Please remedy’.

Cllr Amy Croft out collecting up leaves and bagging them with volunteers

Cllr Croft, out with the rubber gloves on

Meanwhile Chiswick Riverside Cllr Amy Croft has been out bagging up fallen leaves herself, with a small band of helpers, both Labour volunteers and local residents.

Over two recent weekends they collected 60 bags of leaves from Sutton Court Lane South and 15 from Compton Crescent.

“It’s good exercise”, she told me. “Chiswick just has so many trees. It takes up about 40% the Council’s leaf-clearing budget.

“Some extra resource has been put into the programme and so a slightly updated list will appear in due course as extra roads are cleared”, she added.

She is conscious that if she makes a fuss about one road on her patch and gets it pushed up the list, another road gets bumped out of the schedule, so she says instead that if residents in her ward would like help leaf-clearing, she is happy to go along with her band of volunteers and help out.

You can see Hounslow Highways’ schedule for leaf clearance here:

Leaf clearance schedule

If you decide to take matters into your own hands and sweep up your own leaves, you can email businessmanagement@hounslowhighways.org to request some of the orange bags, which when filled can be collected via a Fix My Street request (through the app or the website)

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