Town ‘let down’ by beer cans, litter and weeds

Overgrown planters filled with weeds and nettles are leaving visitors with a bad impression of Spalding town centre.

Last weekend hundreds of visitors still came to the area to enjoy the new Tulipmania event and the host of church flower festivals – despite the fact there was no flower parade this year.

But Pete Williams, town businessman and landlord at the Punchbowl in New Road, claims the town was badly let down by rubbish and a general lack of maintenance ahead of what is one of Spalding’s biggest weekends of the year for tourists, blaming South Holland District Council.

He said: “A day or two before the weekend I counted something like 30 beer cans and 15 to 20 bottles of vodka, including some smashed ones, just lying around in areas like Chapel Lane.

“The planters outside Boots, which I believe have been sponsored by Spalding Round Table, have been left to go to wrack and ruin and they are just overrun with nettles.

“The thing that really upsets me is that the council is quick to make sure traders do their job in meeting all the rules and regulations it sets but what about them?

“Who makes sure they are doing their job?

“People often sit around there to eat their lunch and pass the time of day, but they are having to sit there surrounded by nettles and beer bottles.

“Presumably the Round Table gave the council money to look after these planters, but the council is failing to keep its part of the bargain to maintain them.”

A spokesman for South Holland District Council said there were actually very few weeds in the planters.

He said: “We used to plant them up with bedding plants but they were repeatedly vandalised – ripped out and thrown on the ground – so we replaced them with rose shrubs.

“Unfortunately the rose shrubs look more like weeds than weeds do, so the idea hasn’t been very successful and we are looking to replace them with bedding plants again in time for the Britain in Bloom competition.

“If people continue to vandalise them there is very little we can do and we would ask people to recognise the work the council puts in to make the town look good and leave the plants alone.”