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Thankyou to everyone who has reported to us or the council the substantial flytip that has appeared in recent weeks next to a small copse on the east side of Swangleys Lane, half way between Datchworth and Knebworth. 

This waste has all been illegally dumped by a commercial operator and we are aware of its contents – spread over 50 dustbin bags and other larger items.  We spotted this problem immediately and have been working from the outset with Herts Police and our local North Herts Environmental Crimes Officers.  This rubbish extends from the road edge backwards into our field and therefore NHDC will not collect it, whilst for us it would constitute commercial waste that needs a waste-carriers licence and considerable fee to remove.  We are working with the Environmental Crimes officers who have been very helpful,  have this logged as a crime and with their input we are trying to find a resolution.  I know that one of our farm neighbours posted this incident to the We Are From Knebworth Facebook group – thankyou for that and for the many responses (more than 40 in 24hours).  Do please feel free to share your thoughts on Facebook and with the local Parish Councils and NHDC, as it can only help.

In the last two weeks – while dealing with this incident – a further flytipping of domestic and redecorating waste appeared overnight in our field gateway around 200m away. We traced that back to a specific Knebworth resident and have successfully taken action against them. I still find it shocking that there are people who are prepared to either dump their waste in a field outside their own village (which we have experienced numerous times) or give it up to an unlicensed carrier in the knowledge that they are likely to do the same.  Flytipping has been illegal for many years, but passing waste to unlicensed carriers is also now illegal and prosecutions are regularly made. 

These incidents are an extra drain on the farm as a business. Swangleys is just a small family-run farm operating in difficult economic circumstances and with a real need to diversify our business if we are to stay viable.  Yet, despite these challenges, we put a lot of effort into being good neighbours :  For the community’s longer term benefit, we are working closely with the Knebworth Neighbourhood Plan team and the NHDC Planning Policy unit on how the village can achieve some of its own local priorities after the introduction of NHDC’s upcoming but understandably controversial Local Plan development process.  And in the shorter term, we choose to run and pay for ourselves a wide range of ecology initiatives; we always collect litter dropped on our own land by local people and periodically also undertake a full litterpick of the council’s roadside verges on our own initiative…… as you’ll see elsewhere in our News section.  It is upsetting for everyone in the community when flytippers move in – all the more so if they are members of that local community – and this is only one type of antisocial activity that the farm suffers on a regular basis .  One of those recurring activities is trespassing, which we know from experience brings with it unwanted conflict, public liability risks, littering and vandalism.  We really do appreciate your help in spotting and highlighting these problems and we welcome your positive support and understanding in our ongoing efforts to put the business on a firmer footing through its various longer term diversification projects.

As always, please feel free to use the Contact form if you need to alert us to anything or want to generally get in touch. This blog post has been shared with the Knebworth, Woolmer Green and Datchworth parish councils.

Thanks

We’re almost at the end of this year’s harvest – having had to work around some very difficult wet and wild weather mid harvest – but it’s finally dry enough to finish the job.

We know that harvest inevitably means dust and noise for people living close to our fields in Knebworth, Woolmer Green and Datchworth so thankyou to all our neighbours for bearing with us – it’s an essential time of year for us so we appreciate your support.

UPDATE : Ringway have confirmed that they intend to repair this hole and will do so some time from mid August. No backstop date has been given.

ORIGINAL POST :

Several local people have been in touch to let us know that there is an exposed concrete pipe with a deep hole in it near the allotments at the edge of the field to the south of the Watton Lane pumping station.  It’s a potential hazard and we have heard from one local person who reports that they have already stumbled into it and been injured as a result.

The holed pipe is Herts County Council’s soakaway that takes excess surface water from local roads. Herts County own and installed the pipe and their contractor Ringway is responsible to them for maintenance.  We have today marked the hole to highlight the danger and had already contacted both Herts County and Ringway to alert them to their need to repair the pipe to avoid a potential risk. The Parish Council are also aware.  Normally, Herts would put Ringway in charge of any repairs, but I imagine that this would take quite a while for Herts and Ringway to programme – potentially months based on previous experience.    We will post on this website any further updates that we become aware of.

We always look to run a safe farm, but please recognise and respect that – although we see some people have started using this area as a shortcut – the location where the hole lies is part of our own arable field and is not a public right of way nor a permissive path, something that can be easily checked with Ordnance Survey maps.

We became aware of this hole through feedback from the local community – for which we are always grateful. Being a farm based on the edge of a built-up area, we have our fair share of vandalism, fly tipping, theft and other antisocial activities. We have always worked closely with neighbouring residents to help each other combat these problems. If you do ever see a hazard such as this hole or the results of some antisocial activity on the farmland that we should be aware of then always feel welcome to let us know using the Contact Form section of the website.

We recently spent a full weekend morning on a mission of picking litter from the council’s verges along Swangleys Lane.

We constantly remove rubbish that we find on our own fields but, when we can find time, we sometimes also have a big session clearing the public verges. The rubbish-strewn country lanes on the fringes of Knebworth, Woolmer Green and Datchworth are a real blight for each of our communities and we try to help put this right when we can.

Most of what we took away that morning was a build-up of cans and bottles and other food wrappings thrown out of the windows of passing vehicles or dropped by walkers. In the stretch of Swangleys Lane from the farm up to the junction of Baines Lane in Datchworth, the general litter part of our haul filled 8 bin bags including over 80 cans and bottles alone, plus several larger dumped items not shown in the photo below.

On our way, we discovered these two different hedges sprouting beercan fruit to their tops, a good 8ft above the road.

        

More disappointingly, in addition to the discarding of hundreds of small pieces of litter, were also a group of carefully flytipped carrier bags containing domestic rubbish from a single household that had been deliberately transported to just outside Knebworth for dumping.  Those bags even included an unused Xmas Elf Hat and an Xmas card from the previous Christmas addressed to the householders by name.  Poor bin collection in our area and closed or full council waste sites have been issues for many people locally, but it’s sad to see the use of the countryside verges around the village as an alternative dumping ground. It’s something we encounter – and deal with – both on our field boundaries and the council’s verges many times a year.