Coronavirus: Birmingham mows socially distant 'strips' into grass in parks to keep visitors apart
Birmingham City Council is cutting two metre strips into grass in its 591 parks and open spaces as restrictions are loosened.
Wednesday 13 May 2020 18:51, UK
A solution to keeping people safe in parks as England's lockdown is eased has been found by the country's largest local authority.
With an expected surge in visitors as restrictions brought in to deal with the pandemic are loosened, Birmingham City Council has ordered two metre strips to be mown into grass in its 591 parks and open spaces.
The wider-than-normal channels will be divided by two metres spaces where the grass is left long.
From Wednesday, people can leave their homes more and are allowed to picnic and sunbathe as long as they observe social distancing.
Councillor John O'Shea, head of the city council's parks, said regular cutting has been paused as "a significant number of our parks staff have been diverted on to other street-scene tasks during the early days of the coronavirus crisis".
He said: "Because the grass has been left to grow for several weeks, it means where the grass is cut there will be a notable difference.
"By cutting these channels, we will be making our parks more usable - and usable in a safer way, where people will have some guidance on how to follow the national guidelines to stay two metres away from people outside of your family.
"The fact that we have 591 parks and open spaces of vastly differing sizes means it is not easy to promote the social distancing message across each and every site, but this is a way of doing something, best utilising the limited resources we have at this challenging time," he added.
Birmingham has recorded more than 3,100 coronavirus cases, second only to Kent which has more than 4,200, in the list of English local authorities.
On Wednesday, another 494 people who have tested positive for COVID-19 in the UK were confirmed to have died, taking the total to 33,186.