by Dr Trevor Dines As a botanist, I very much view the world from the roots up. In urban landscapes, I’m particularly obsessed with urban cliffs – or ‘walls’ as some people call them – where a multitude of ferns, mosses and flowering plants eke out a living in the [...]

Council workers and contractors across the UK are currently spraying the weeds on our pavements, parks, playgrounds and other public green spaces with toxic herbicides. Author and artist, Anna Chapman Parker, provides us with a glimpse of the under-appreciated beauty being lost. Not only are pavement plants vital in supporting [...]

Since the Pesticide-Free Towns campaign launched in 2015, PAN UK has helped more than one hundred UK local authorities reduce or end their use of pesticides with relatively little fanfare. In fact, in most places in the UK, how councils choose to manage weeds has generally been considered a rather [...]

Last month, we contacted our supporters about the Pesticide Collaboration’s new campaign, which is calling for a national ban on the use of pesticides in urban areas.  We have now had over 100 councillors sign on to our letter to the UK Government, demonstrating that there is widespread support from [...]

What now for your Pesticide-Free Towns Campaign? Councils are receiving less funding, and their budgets and services are being cut. Six councils, including Birmingham and Nottingham have declared bankruptcy, and many more might follow. Most recently, Havering Borough Council revealed that they would need to file for bankruptcy if they [...]

Brighton and Hove Council have decided to reinstate the use of the controversial herbicide, glyphosate, on the city’s streets. This decision bucks the trend of recent years which has seen more than one hundred UK local authorities either end, or significantly reduce, their use of pesticides in urban areas and [...]

By Emma Pavans de Ceccatty, PAN UK As early as the 1990s, Paris was already putting significant measures in place to reduce their use of pesticides (herbicides, insecticides, fungicides etc.) on streets, pavements, parks, playgrounds and other urban spaces. By 2017, when a national ban on all amenity use [...]

by Laura Potts, resident of York and former PAN trustee Laura organised a recent walk around Bishophill in York, looking at weeds growing on local streets. The walk was part of York Environment Week 2023 (actually more like a month of community generated events), and inspired by PAN ‘Greener Cities’ [...]

by Emma Pavans de Ceccatty, Campaigner, PAN UK A report released by PAN Europe earlier this year ‘Pesticide Free Towns: A Diversity of European Approaches’ shows that many of our European neighbours have been making great progress towards banning the use of pesticides in public urban spaces. Luxembourg and France [...]

by Emma Pavans de Ceccatty, Campaigner, PAN UK With the increase in concern over how to make our cities better for pollinators, we’re learning that not all environmentalism looks the same. Honey bees have long been the “icons” of the climate and nature crises, often to the detriment of the [...]

With one month to go until London local elections, new information* reveals that local authorities are using twenty-two potentially harmful chemicals to remove weeds on the capital’s streets, parks and playgrounds. Based on answers to a series of Freedom of Information requests, the list includes seven pesticides with links to [...]

by Emma Pavans de Ceccatty, Pesticide-Free Towns Campaign Manager, PAN UK Our recent series of talks Reassembling Our Cities brought together 16 inspiring speakers to celebrate the diversity of nature in our cities and gardens, and the incredible projects that these speakers have set up to promote and protect it. Our [...]

The result of the London Mayoral election has finally been decided, a year behind schedule, and Sadiq Khan will be in power for another four years. At the London Mayoral Environment Hustings prior to the election, PAN UK was heartened to hear from all political parties in attendance that they [...]