Source: London Live
URL: http://www.londonlive.co.uk/news/2014-10-17/not-the-one-show-17th-october-2014
Date: 17/10/2014
Event: "Autumn is very much now a challenge for local authorities"
Credit: London Live
People:
Clyde Loakes: During autumn - as you can well imagine, with the title of Waltham Forest - we have a lot of street trees, we therefore have a lot of leaves that we have to cater for, during the autumn fall. We've probably been increasing our provision, during this time, for the past four or five years.
I definitely think climate is changing, and as someone who, kind of, leads a service area that deals with, you know, public rail and our highways, the impact is very, very clear. You know, that autumn month - a month that would have been traditionally not necessarily a challenging month for us, as a council, to kind of deal with some of its quirkiness - is increasingly a little bit more challenging.
You know, that leaf fall doesn't happen in a single drop, as a result of one frost, any more, we don't have those frosts as early as we used to. Actually, the leaf fall process is now largely driven by rain, caused by a milder autumn period and, you know, a longer autumn period. Like I say, I think autumn now runs from the end of September very much into December, whereas perhaps traditionally, people have thought of autumn as a, kind of, October, part of November period of time.
Coupled with that, the fact that residents can pave over their back gardens, build in their back gardens, a lot more than they used to be able to, means the permeability of the gardens is greatly reduced, coupled with the fact that many people still do not use the right things to, kind of, cover their front garden, you know, they put concrete down, when it needs to be a permeable material like block paving. All conspiring to create, you know, more, kind of, flash flood consequences, large puddling, small lakes in our roads. Autumn is very much now a challenge for local authorities.