Caerphilly County Borough Council has restarted grass cutting in residential areas and housing estates after a four-month delay due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Grass cutting has continued along roadside verges to ensure highway safety, but cutting around housing estates and residential areas, which normally starts in mid-March, was delayed until July.

The council says it is “working hard to strike the right balance between keeping the county borough tidy, while helping to promote biodiversity.”

To protect local wildlife, the council has been cutting a metre from the kerbside on roadside verges and has limited activity to junctions and roundabouts.

The cabinet member for the environment, Councillor Nigel George, said: “Our crews will need to work hard to tackle the amount of growth as a result of the lack of grass cutting over recent months.

“We will be litter picking prior to cutting, but inevitably with the grass being this long it’s going to be impossible to capture all of the litter and achieve a neat finish after the first cut, so we would ask residents to bear with us as we tackle this major challenge.

“Residents should see a return to normality after the second round of housing estate grass cutting in August.”