RESIDENTS in Spring Meadows, Derrylin, were forced to take matters into their own hands last week after their park’s green had been left uncut for almost a year.

Abandoned to live up to its name, the green at Spring Meadows managed to produce eight round bales after a local farmer brought his tractor in to cut the unruly grass.

Despite several attempts to lobby the local council, residents say they have been left in limbo as to who is responsible for maintaining the patch in the middle of their park.

“I bought my house off the bank back in 2012,” Colin McCaffrey explained, “The park was only half finished at that stage. There was only the first layer of tarmac complete and the street lights were not working.

“We made numerous complaints to see if the council or anybody would do anything for us. Eventually the council fixed all the street lights and tarmaced the footpath.

“The park was finished off nicely. But nobody has ever taken responsibility for cutting the grass.” According to Colin, up until last year, the grass was being cut by someone on a regular basis.

But when the Department of Regional Development adopted the park, this came to an end.

“I don’t know who was paying them to do it,” said Colin, “We haven’t been paying any management fees.

“If there was a management fee in place, that would be fine, we would just accept that -- we just want to know who is supposed to be responsible for this. But everyone seems to be taking the attitude that: ‘It is not my problem’, and we are left in limbo.

“I have seen the council coming in here to pick up litter and they have strimmed the edges of the footpath in the past too.

“When I saw them strimming I thought: ‘Finally, they are going to cut the grass’.

“But they just did the footpath and that was it -- the bare minimum.” Mr. McCaffrey’s neighbour, Eleanor Lynam, began contacting the council to enquire about who held responsibility for the grass-cutting duties.

“I phoned the council three to four times and was just pushed from pillar to post,” she told the Impartial Reporter.

“Nobody replied to me.

“I emailed and I was sent back an automatic reply to say it had been received. But no one ever got back to me.

“When I emailed the same request again, I still heard nothing.” According to Eleanor, both she and the rest of the residents of Spring Meadow became sick of the sight of the unkempt grass.

“It was an eyesore -- all our own gardens were well-maintained, but we might as well not have bothered because you couldn’t see them over the height of the uncut grass.

“It was full of big stalks of thistles, really thick.

“I managed to get together some money from people in the park to bring in someone to cut the grass. But his mower couldn’t do it. The grass was too high and the thistles would probably have broken the blades on a normal mower anyway. We had to get someone to bring in a tractor instead to cut it.

“It was only cut last week. But we are still left with the question of who is going to do it the next time?

“I said to everyone: ‘If you want this person to continue cutting the grass every so often, we can arrange that’.

“But I would prefer to find out who is supposed to be responsible for actually doing it “I can not understand why the council would not take this on. I am paying my rates -- does that not cover this kind of thing?” A spokeswoman for the council said: “Grass cutting in private housing developments is not the responsibility of the Council. Grass cutting is undertaken by the Council on public property or on property in the ownership of the Council such as play areas, grass pitches and other public amenity sites.

“As part of the planning approval process, a planning condition is placed on new Private Housing Developments that legally requires the appointment of a Management Contractor who is responsible for grass cutting in open space areas within the housing development. “It is normal that householders in private housing developments pay a nominal management fee for this service. Householders should make contact with their legal representative involved in the conveyance of their property to identify who the Management Contractor is, if this is not clear.”