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By Mark Dempsey in Local Authority on 3rd May 2006 8:00

Calderdale Parks and Street Scene NRoSO Training

By Mark Dempsey

Calderdale Council Parks and Street Staff have recently taken part in a training event to upgrade their awareness of potential water contamination issues, update of LERAPS (Local Environmental Risk Assessment of Pesticides), coupled with the opportunity to discuss the impact of the new Defra Pesticide Guidelines which were issued in March this year.

Other subjects covered on the course were growth retardants, pesticide calibration and Health and Safety legislation.

The training was provided by Geoff Wilson Training of York, who has established links with Calderdale Parks and Street scene by supplying machinery and equipment and also training Calderdale staff to various NPTC standards for a number of years.

The event was held at Manor Heath Park in Halifax which is to apply for Green Flag status in early summer. The venue at Manor Heath provides a classroom within a park setting.

15 Staff attended the course, of which 10 are members of NRoSO (National Register of Spray Operators). It is good that Calderdale Council and its staff can show such a commitment to the NRoSO scheme. The course had a value of 6 CPD points which spray operators need to accrue on a rolling programme over a 3 year period.

NRoSO is part of the voluntary initiative which has been set up by various bodies in agriculture, and pesticide users in agriculture and Local government, to try and encourage responsible use of pesticides by providing training events and keeping all spray operators to date with new legislation and application techniques.

Currently there are approximately 17,500 NRoSO spray operators in the UK however only 2,500 are from the Amenity Sector.

The day went well, the pace and course content covered by Geoff was just right, all Calderdale staff all got involved and contributed actively to the day and I think that everybody involved learnt something from the event.

Read more articles in Local Authority, by Mark Dempsey or from May 2006.

There is 1 comment on this article

16 Nov 2006 by clarence

The concept of using growth retardant to manage the rate of grass growth in the Grounds Maintenance and turf care industries is nothing new,but after attending the Primo maxx presentation by Dr Karl Danneburger at Last years BTME show Calderdale Parks and Street Scene Central Support Manager Mark Dempsey wanted to try out the use of growth retardant in reverse and set up a trial along the Hebble trail in Halifax to attempt to suppress the growth of native grass species to establish wildflower colonization in Natural grassed areas.

The trial worked really well even allowing for the extremes of hot and wet weather experienced this summer, I split the trial into 3 profile areas Non maintained natural grass containing wildflower species, an area treated the previous winter with a total translocated glyphosphate herbicide then planted with native wildflower plug plants and an area a area of natural grass again planted with native wildflower plug plants.

The results were positive and in all three areas using Primo Maxx enabled the wildflowers to become dominant over the native grass and also allowed the young wildflower plugs to establish themselves and become established. Using Primo Maxx in this was successful it promoted the successful colonization and devolvement of both existing and new wildflowers, whilst at the same time no mowing was necessary at all until Autumn when annual cutting down and collection is required to maintain a wildflower meadow

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