Scarborough Council unfair to ragwort and biodiversity

Are you going to Scarborough Fair? So go the words to a famous song.
Well perhaps there is no fair selling things there now but the local council
is certainly not being fair to the biodiversity supported by ragwort.One of their documents on-line contains the following piece of claptrap.


It is one of 5 species listed as a Noxious Weed in the 1949 Weeds Act and it is an offence to allow the plant to proliferate on your land and spread to adjacent property. The Ragwort Control Bill (2003) has recently been passed to strengthen this.


It is hard to know where to start with a statement like this. It is so full of inaccuracies. So I will take them in the order in which they occur.

First of all the term used in the Weeds Act is "injurious weeds". It means in this context weeds that are harmful to the interests of agriculture. Follow the link to find a proper explanation of the derivation from Latin of the word "injurious".

Then it is the Weeds Act 1959 not 1949. It is most definitely not an offence
under the weeds act to allow the plant to proliferate on your land!

Finally all the Ragwort Control Act ( Act is the correct word for bills that have passed!) only tells the government that it can produce some guidance.

There is an earlier blog entry explaining the law on ragwort.