UKLCA BASIS Webinar
Wednesday 2nd December 2020 - 5.00pm on Zoom
Important Message from the UKLCA, Amenity Forum and BASIS
Nearly one year ago we were all at the UKLCA conference in Wyboston discussing the pros and cons of allowing franchises into the UKLCA. At the time we clearly decided not to go ahead and the proposal was instead to see if we could set up a group within the Amenity Forum that could represent UK Lawn Care as a whole. I was tasked from the Committee to approach Professor John Moverley with the proposal and see what could be done.
Since then we have made a great deal of progress. John thought the proposal was a very good one and immediately set about forming the group with representatives from Greenthumb and Greensleeves (the two largest franchise groups) and myself representing the UKLCA. The Amenity Forum Lawn Care Group was formed and we had our inaugural Zoom meeting back in June. Those around the virtual table represented approximately 90% of the UK lawn care market.
John briefed us all on what a critical time this is as the Government is reviewing pesticide use in the amenity area and placed a great importance on having co-ordinated representation from the lawn care industry alongside other important users of pesticides in amenity such as professional sportsturf, local authorities, etc.
The most important first action was to gather information on the UK lawn care market, hence the importance of the benchmarking process. All parties carried this out and the figures were collated by the Amenity Forum. We now know that the lawn care market has a GDP of over £100M, employs over 2,000 people and their services are used by over 600,000 householders in the UK. This information is critical to provide to the Government to ensure that decisions affecting the UK lawn care industry are not taken lightly.
So what bearing does this have on BASIS Lawn Assured? Well quite a lot it appears. The Government is reviewing how professional standards of pesticide use and application are monitored in the amenity area. It is a distinct possibility that they will require a professional standard (over and above Pa1/Pa6) to be implemented in amenity. This may be voluntary or it may be statutory. The only professional standard in place is BASIS Lawn Assured. This requirement is coming...it is just a question of when individual companies take it on board. For your information, Greenthumb and Greensleeves are fully supporting BASIS Lawn Assured.
So my personal view, which is also the view of the UKLCA Committee, is that the sooner independent companies take on BASIS Lawn Assured the better prepared and better protected they will be going forward.
Please do listen to Professor John Moverley's video message, it does give a lot of background of what is going on at Government level at the moment with regards to pesticide use.
If you are not already signed up to BASIS Lawn Assured I urge you to attend the webinar next week to learn more about the process. Having been through the process myself I can say it is not painful it is positive!
We look forward to seeing you at the webinar.
Best regards
Tom Arnold, Vice Chair, UKLCA
