In the ten years since we launched the Pesticide-Free Towns campaign, we have done our best to keep on top of all the changes that have been made by UK councils. However, as the campaign has made more and more progress, increasing numbers of councils have taken action to reduce or end their pesticide use. Conversely, a handful of councils have reverted back to using pesticides after previously being pesticide-free. 

Keeping up to date with the moves made by every council across the country has proven to be an impossible task, particularly for a small organisation with limited capacity. The UK government’s own monitoring of pesticide use by councils is both long out of date and hugely incomplete. 

While monitoring the activities of every council in the country does not seem like a good use of our very limited time, as the main experts on urban pesticide use in the UK we do want to provide local residents and others with some way of discovering whether councils are using pesticides. We, therefore, decided to send Freedom of Information Requests to almost 400 UK councils, using the responses to provide a ‘snapshot’ of the current situation on pesticide use by local authorities in public spaces. This has allowed us to see just how far we have come in ten years and how much further there is still to go.

Between January and May 2025, we sent Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to a total of 390 local authorities in all four UK nations. We included city, borough, district and county councils. The list of councils we purchased from a third party also included a handful of town councils to which we also sent FoI requests. 

Of the 390 councils we contacted, we received responses from 368 – a response rate of 94%. 

We asked councils a total of five questions, all focused on their use of urban pesticides in 2024.

Firstly, we asked if each council, or contractors acting on its behalf, use herbicide in the following six areas under its control:

1. Parks and green spaces
2. Cemeteries
3. Playing fields
4. Road verges and roundabouts
5. Hard surfaces such as pavements and highways
6. Housing estates

We also asked the following four questions:

• What volume/weight of herbicides did the council and any contractors acting on its behalf use in 2024?
• Does the council (or its contractors) use glyphosate-based herbicides?
• How much money did the council spend on herbicides in 2024, not only on purchasing the chemicals but also on associated costs such as application equipment, staff training and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)?
• Does the council have a policy in place aimed at reducing or ending the use of herbicides on land under its control?

As the responses came in, we inputted them into a database to make them easily accessible to residents wanting to find out if their local council uses pesticides. We also set about analysing them to identify overall trends, both UK-wide and within the four nations.

We sent Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to a total of 390 local authorities in all four UK nations. This covered all the 375 principal local authorities in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. We included city, borough, district and county councils. The list of councils we purchased from a third party also included a handful of town councils to which we also sent FoI requests. See Annex 1 on page 30 of the report for the full list of councils we contacted.

However, as there are an estimated 10,000 smaller town and parish councils in the UK, we did not have the capacity to contact them all. 

If your council is not listed on our database, do feel free to send them your own FoI request which you can download here. In addition, you can  get a sense of what is going on in your area by searching for your county  in the database. 

If a council tells you that it is not using pesticides in a particular area then it is a good indication that the area in question is pesticide-free, but it is unfortunately not definitive. This is because pesticide application is conducted by varying levels of local authorities so, in some towns (for example), the town council will manage one type of land while the district or county council manages another.

Parks and green spaces are usually managed directly by the local council so if they say that they are not using pesticides in these spaces then it is usually safe to assume that these areas are indeed pesticide-free. However, it gets more complicated with areas such as roads, streets and housing estates which are more likely to fall within a council area but actually be maintained by another (usually higher) authority. In order to find out who might be spraying pesticides in your local area, it is always worth approaching your local council and asking which authority manages what land.

While the council might not be using pesticides it is possible that other land managers in your area are still using them. This might be the case with private land such as shopping centres and housing estates. Similarly, areas of a town or city (particularly roads and streets), might not be under the control of the local council and instead be the responsibility of a higher authority, usually a district or county council. 

Alternatively, a council might be using an alternative such as pelargonic or acetic acid which look very similar to pesticides when being applied.

When a council makes progress on going pesticide-free it can take a variety of forms. Key positive steps include: passing a council Motion, introducing a policy or making some other kind of public commitment to reduce and ultimately end pesticide use; and commissioning thorough trials to explore non-chemical alternatives.

While these are important and necessary milestones on the road to going pesticide-free, ultimately what matters is that councils stop using pesticides on areas of land under their control. PAN UK’s three-year phase out plan, which has been followed successfully by many UK councils, advocates that councils stop applying pesticide in parks and green spaces in year one and then tackle streets and pavements in years two and three.

We asked councils about their pesticide use from 1st January to 31st December 2024. However, councils constantly adapt their approach to pesticides so the situation may have changed since then. The best way to ensure that you have up to date pesticide usage data is to check with your local council.

There are many users of pesticides in urban areas. Even looking just at local authorities often reveals a confusing picture, with councils of various levels responsible for maintaining different areas. For example, a town council may be responsible for parks and decide that they aren’t going to use pesticides in those spaces. Meanwhile, pavements in the same town could be managed by a district or county council that do spray pesticides. This complex patchwork makes it almost impossible to state with certainty that particular towns or cities are pesticide-free without digging deeper into each individual locality. 

In addition, it is not only councils that use pesticides in our towns and cities. Many other major land managers are using pesticides to control weeds in a range of areas including shopping centres, hospitals, schools, university campuses and around transport infrastructure. Declaring a town “pesticide-free” even if all local authorities have stopped using pesticides could, therefore, be misleading.

Of the 368 responses we received from UK councils, we estimate that around 45% are taking action to end or reduce their pesticide use. This can range from small actions, such as running a trial of non-chemical alternatives in one part of a town to councils that have managed to end all their pesticide use other than for controlling invasive species. 

Over the last decade, PAN UK has worked directly with hundreds of councils to help them transition away from pesticides. There are almost infinite ways to go about it and councils tend to choose the approach that best suits their local context. While we advocate for councils to end their pesticide use entirely, any reduction in use is a positive step forward since it lowers the level of chemical exposure for both humans and the environment. 

Given all these nuances, we have chosen not to focus solely on councils that are “pesticide-free” but to instead celebrate and recognise the efforts of all those councils across the UK working hard to reduce their pesticide use.

The vast majority of pesticides used by UK local councils are herbicides (or ‘weedkillers’) aimed at removing plants from hard surfaces such as streets, pavements, pathways and on housing estates under council control. They are also used in green spaces, most notably parks, playgrounds, sports pitches, road verges and cemeteries. While councils do sometimes use fungicides and insecticides, usually on sports pitches and playgrounds, the amounts tend to be minuscule when compared to their herbicide use. It is for this reason we only asked councils about their herbicide use. 

According to the UK government, there are currently 19 different herbicides being used by local authorities, four of which are classified as Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs), meaning that they pose a particularly high risk to human health and/or the environment. By far the most widely used is glyphosate which makes up 96% of all the pesticide active substances applied by councils. As a result, it sometimes feels like the Pesticide-Free Towns movement is in fact campaigning to end the use of glyphosate in public spaces. However, there is no point in stopping the use of glyphosate to simply transition over to using other synthetic herbicides commonly used in public spaces (such as 2,4-D or MCPA) which are often equally, or sometimes even more, toxic. 

Yes! They do not include any pesticides used by thousands of towns and parish councils across the UK.

UK councils are currently spending large amounts of public funds on applying pesticides for weed control in public spaces. While ending the use of pesticides can increase costs for councils, it is also possible for a pesticide-free approach to lead to significant cost-savings. As just one of many examples, Hackney Borough Council in London saved £10,000 per year simply by stopping spraying pesticides on busy streets where footfall was sufficient to prevent weeds from establishing.

Absolutely! Countries such as France and Belgium banned pesticides from public spaces many years ago without any issues. Just take a look at the shots of Paris during the 2024 Summer Olympics and you will see how well-cared for it looked without using any pesticides.

Having said that, it is vital that councils ensure that the rights and needs of those who struggle with access are taken into consideration when designing and implementing their pesticide phase-out plans. The best way to do this is to explicitly include consultations with local groups and networks that represent disabled and elderly people in public outreach initiatives. These groups will be best-placed to represent the voices and concerns of their members and advise on how best to go pesticide-free while maintaining accessibility.

PAN UK does not suggest that councils stop using pesticides overnight. We encourage councils to adopt our three-year phase out plan to ensure that the journey to going pesticide-free is well-thought out, and that the benefits are equally shared amongst all residents.

In many cases, there is a need to control invasive species such as Japanese knotweed and giant hogweed. Removal might be required to protect human health, ensure infrastructure is not damaged or, in the case of some invasive species, there is a legal requirement to remove them.

Pesticides are the main tool of choice for killing invasive species, and, unlike with other unwanted vegetation, there are currently limited cost-effective alternatives available. However, this is slowly changing as more non-chemical alternatives are being developed. In the meantime, councils seeking to go pesticide-free can build an exemption clause into their policy permitting them to use herbicides for the purpose of controlling invasive species. However, they should use techniques that keep the amount of pesticides used to a minimum, such as injecting the chemical directly into the stem of the plant thereby reducing runoff and drift. They should also monitor developments in alternative treatments and be open to trialling them as they come on to the market. 

It should be noted that councils only using pesticides to tackle invasive species are likely to be using far lower amounts than those using them to maintain whole areas such as parks and pavements.

Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum, systemic herbicide used to control weeds. It is the most widely-used herbicide in the world and is used in public spaces in most villages, towns and cities of the UK. It is classified as a Highly Hazardous Pesticide (HHP) due to its potential harmful impact on human health. 

In March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC, part of the UN World Health Organisation) declared glyphosate to be genotoxic (it causes DNA damage), carcinogenic to animals, and a “probable carcinogen” to humans. This ruling was based on a review of one thousand publicly available scientific studies by independent experts. Meanwhile, since 2018, there have been a spate of US court cases linking Monsanto’s Roundup – which contains glyphosate as its key ingredient – to the potential risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma (a type of cancer). It is worth noting that many of these cases were linked to non-agricultural activities such as grounds maintenance and landscape gardening. Landmark legal defeats for Monsanto (now Bayer) have resulted in jury verdicts worth billions.

There is an ever-growing body of evidence linking glyphosate to both environmental and human health harms. In June 2025, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on glyphosate was published. The Global Glyphosate Study concluded that glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides cause multiple types of cancer, even at exposure levels deemed to be “safe” by governments, including the EU.

‘Pesticides’ is an umbrella term for a wide range of compounds including herbicides (designed to kill plants), insecticides, fungicides, rodenticides, molluscicides and nematicides. There is a common misconception that the term ‘pesticides’ refers solely to substances designed to kill insects, but this is incorrect. 

The Pesticide-Free Towns campaign focuses on ending the use of all pesticides by local councils. However, in reality, almost all of the pesticides used by councils are herbicides and the vast majority of those are glyphosate-based. 

This project involved sending Freedom of Information requests to almost 400 councils which then provided us with roughly 3,600 individual pieces of data. In order to make it manageable, we focussed our enquiries solely on councils’ herbicide use. Given that this makes up more than 95% of the total pesticides used by local councils, it is certainly sufficient to provide a useful overview of pesticide use by UK councils.

Pesticides are poisons designed to kill living organisms and they can also have harmful effects on non-target species, including people. There are ongoing concerns about the use of glyphosate and its links to cancer and other diseases. Ending the use of pesticides in towns and cities will reduce public exposure to harmful chemicals and reduce the potential for harm, particularly for our children. 

We are currently in the midst of a biodiversity crisis and the UK is widely acknowledged to be one of the most nature depleted countries in the world. Going pesticide-free and allowing nature to flourish can help protect, restore and encourage biodiversity in urban areas. By allowing pavement plants to thrive we can increase plant diversity  and also assist the wildlife that relies on plants for their survival, from bees and pollinators to birds and mammals such as hedgehogs. Ending pesticide use on pavements, in particular, will also reduce run off thereby protecting UK waters from further contamination.