Mowing and Maintenance - Report an Issue

During high demand (Spring and Summer) and rain periods, grass growth will increase and you may notice areas of longer grass during these times. You can report this for a mowing inspection online.

For any urgent requests relating to safety, please phone Council on 02 4645 4000. If calling outside of Council business hours, you will be redirected to the Council's after hours call service and required to follow the prompts.

If you have concerns about overgrown land, there are several things you can do.

Council does not own and/or is not responsible for maintaining:

• Private land/property: Contact property owner.
• RMS roads median islands (M31, M5, Narellan Rd, Appin Rd): Call RMS Incident Reporting on 131 700.

Council encourages all residents to maintain and mow the nature strips that front and border your property to help keep our community streets tidy and safe.

When mowing your nature strip follow these handy tips

• Clear your nature strip of large sticks, stones and objects that may become projectiles, as objects that get flicked up by mower blades can cause damage to your own or other people's property
• Wear enclosed shoes, sunglasses and ear muffs or ear plugs for protection
• Be sun smart - wear sunscreen, long sleeve shirt, hat and sunglasses
• Make sure your lawn is dry, as wet grass can clog up your blades
• Only cut the top third of the grass, cutting lawns too short increases evaporation and promotes weed growth
• Compost or mulch your grass clippings, as an alternative to putting your grass clippings in your garden organics bin
• Be aware of noise times and levels
• Remember it is illegal to blow or sweep leaf litter from nature strips and driveways into gutters, as it blocks drains and can cause flooding.

We're currently experiencing an uncharacteristically wet summer due to the La Niña weather cycle bringing increased rainfall and damp conditions.

This has encouraged faster growth rates and soft ground, preventing us from transporting heavy machinery onto land without damaging it.

Also, with the COVID-19 pandemic requiring that staff isolate and recover as needed, we're also sometimes working with fewer staff with a higher demand than usual.

Staff are currently mowing sites which require mowing again only 5 days later. Many of these sites are generally on a schedule or two weeks or more depending on the site. This means grass is growing 3 times faster than it usually does resulting in double to triple the time to cut due to the height and moisture of the grass regardless of the machinery used.

Once grass grows too long we often need to use tractor slashers to cut the bulk of the grass and then complete the job with a ride-on mower. When the ground is boggy, the heavy slasher can damage the playing fields, reserves or parks and the grass becomes lodged in the blades which would result in damaged equipment.

Due the extent of mowing required across the city, handheld machinery such as brush cutters are only used for finer detail work.

We're working through the priority areas across each suburb as soon as they're dry enough to put equipment onto. During extreme growth conditions such as now and sites are mown based on priority but safety is our highest priority.

Parks and playgrounds, sports fields, leisure centres and other public spaces around facilities are treated as priority because of their high volume of use. This can be subject to change based on circumstantial safety hazards or other urgencies, such as events and activities scheduled for these locations.

We are actively working to ensure pathways leading to schools are safe and accessible, with students returning to the classroom. If there is a safety concern, these areas are treated as a priority.

We will continue to focus our attention on mowing and take advantage of conditions that allow us to cut grass without damaging the grounds, substructures such as irrigation and drainage or the equipment. Based on weather forecasts, we anticipate that it could be March before we see some relief from these intense growing conditions. Our staff are working extra hours where possible to get back to normal service levels.