Mowing and long grass update
We understand that the long grass situation is disappointing and want to assure our residents that we are doing everything possible to ensure that the long grass across our city is cut as soon as possible.
With over 2,500 parks, reserves and roadsides across Casey, our contractors in the last cycle have serviced 93% of the open spaces and reserves within the required timeframes.
While our focus continues to remain on the areas which have experienced the longest delays between services, additional resources have been directed to service the parks and reserves in the following suburbs:
- Hampton Park
- Lynbrook
- Cranbourne
- Cranbourne North
- Cranbourne East
- Narre Warren
- Narre Warren South
- Berwick
- Beaconsfield
- Clyde North
We expect our mowing schedule will be back to normal by late January 2022.
This year Melbourne’s South East received higher than normal levels of rainfall throughout winter and spring. This resulted in rapid above-average grass growth and affected our mowing and maintenance schedule.
Our contractors have also been experiencing significant delays in receiving new mowing equipment due to COVID-19 associated equipment supply chain issues, as well as challenges with labour supply, which has impacted the schedule further.
We apologise for the inconvenience, and we are continuing to work with our contract partners to ensure our open spaces meet the needs and expectations of our community.
In the meantime, if you need to report an issue, please visit our Report an Issue page.
Storm clean up
October’s storm event was the largest the community had seen in over five years and also had a massive impact throughout the municipality.
Since late October, Council has received over 4,900 customer requests for storm and tree related assistance. This is approximately 50 per cent of the volume of requests that Council received for the entire 2020/21 financial year. This is in addition to the significant storm event mid-year which generated over 20 per cent of the annual request volume.
Our Urban Forest Team is working hard to catch up as quickly as possible. Council’s contractors have now completed 35 per cent of works since the initial storm event, in addition to attending priority sites to clear obstructions from roadways, footpaths and property.
Due to the scale of the storm event, the damage is spread right across the municipality and continues to be a large clean-up project that we are working through.
In order to prioritise the storm’s clean-up activities, non-priority works have been suspended and will re-commence in early 2022. Council’s contract partner, Active Tree Services, has also been drawing on additional resources to increase the clean-up operations.
While we still have a backlog of over 2,000 requests to work through, we are hopeful that a significant number will be completed by the end of December through the boost of additional resources.
