At the suggestion of the Probation Service, we had today a group of people who are doing Community Service help cut back the vegetation on NCN Route 54 at Radbourne.
They were brought from Swadlincote in a mini-bus by their Supervisor, arriving on site at about 10am.
All we had to do was to explain exactly what work was required to the Supervisor and he passed that on to the group of eight which included one girl.
They brought their own tools, which consisted of loppers and saws, together with tea making equipment.
A minor problem was the lack of toilets on site, and so it was necessary to bus them over to Etwall to use the public toilets there. That co-incided with their 45 minute lunch break.
So apart from that and a tea break morning and afternoon, they worked about for about 5 hours, cutting back quite a length of vegetation on the West side of the Curved Seat following the example set by the Rangers who worked there a couple of days earlier.
So, was it all worthwhile? The quality of the work was not up to the standard done by our own Rangers, but nevertheless the ground was cleared and I think that we should invite them to come again. Forty man hours of work is well worth having for free, even if we have to do a bit of tidying up afterwards.
No other problems so overall a worthwhile exercise, finding them work of value to the community and advancing our cutback programme significantly.
2 comments:
Yes, we may as well use the free labour.
Ours, of course, is a labour of love - at least of Mavis's cake!
They could well be of help in getting the paths wider too.
I hope to be out there again soon, Last week I had the Flu - again! that's twice this year, I even missed my flu jab, I was too poorly.
A very interesting account, Les - thanks. The idea of using the Probation Service came up in a workshop I was in at Cardiff last weekend. A guy who had first-hand experience of this said that the group that worked with him did a very good job, while I recall another ranger a few weeks back saying that his group did not. Obviously, commitment varies! (not hugely surprising, I suppose!)
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