Meet Richard Stow, Director Amenity Forum
As part of the ongoing Meet the Board series, Richard Stow, Director of the Amenity Forum and Managing Director of Weedfree Limited, shares his perspective on professional vegetation management, the particular challenges of managing weeds across the UK rail network and the importance of retaining effective, sustainable solutions for critical national infrastructure.
Richard has extensive experience of vegetation management within the rail sector, where controlling weeds is about far more than appearance. Effective vegetation management plays an important role in maintaining safe, accessible and operational infrastructure across a complex network.
Through Weedfree, Richard has been closely involved in the specialist management of vegetation on rail infrastructure, combining experienced operators, specialist application equipment and increasingly precise approaches to ensure treatments are targeted and appropriate to the environment in which they are being used.
This practical experience gives Richard a valuable perspective on the Amenity Forum Board, particularly as the sector responds to changing regulation, environmental expectations and increasing scrutiny of pesticide use.
We spoke to Richard about vegetation management, the evolution of technology and Integrated Pest Management, and why practical experience needs to remain at the heart of future policy.
What attracted you to the Amenity Forum and the opportunity to join its Board?
I’ve been involved in amenity vegetation management for around 33 years, since I first started working at Weedfree. Most of that has been total weed control on streets, railways and industrial sites, so I’ve seen quite a lot of change in the sector over that time.
Weedfree has always been an active member of the Amenity Forum, and I’ve always been interested in getting involved and doing whatever I can to help move things forward and raise awareness of what our sector does.
Within pest management, amenity will probably always be something of the underdog, particularly when compared with agriculture, and who doesn’t like rooting for the underdog?
My experience is very much from the practical side. These days I spend very little time actually out in the field managing vegetation myself, but after 33 years I like to think I have a pretty good understanding of what is needed, what works in practice and, perhaps just as importantly, how to get things done.
That’s what I wanted to bring to the Board: a practical perspective and a voice for the people and businesses actually delivering vegetation management on the ground.
Much of your work is within the rail sector. Why is effective vegetation management so important on the railway?
It’s really about three things: drainage, access and safety.
The ballast that the railway sits on has an incredibly important job to do. Thousands of tonnes of rolling stock repeatedly pass over it, flexing the track and compressing the ballast beneath. For the ballast to do its job properly, good drainage is essential.
If vegetation is allowed to establish, it traps moisture and organic material and interferes with that drainage. Over time, the combination of water and the enormous forces from passing trains causes the ballast to deteriorate and break down. That can eventually affect the geometry of the track and create some very real engineering and safety problems.
Vegetation can also restrict access and make inspection and maintenance of the infrastructure more difficult.
So weed control on the railway really isn’t about making it look tidy. It’s about protecting the ballast, keeping drainage working, maintaining access and, ultimately, helping to keep the railway safe and operational.
And when you’re trying to do that across thousands of miles of railway, with very limited opportunities to access the infrastructure without disrupting train movements, whatever we do has to be safe, effective and practical.
What does professional rail weed management actually involve?
Probably a lot more than most people imagine.
For me, it’s primarily about competence, compliance and safety. In a hazardous environment such as the railway, getting any of those things wrong can have devastating consequences.
The actual mechanics of controlling the vegetation are really only a small part of the job. Long before anybody sprays a weed, uses a chainsaw or cuts back vegetation, an enormous amount of work has already taken place.
You need properly trained and competent people, and I don’t just mean people who are competent to apply pesticides or operate machinery. You need people who understand the railway, who can assess the risks and put safe systems of work in place so that the job can actually be carried out safely.
Behind them you need a planning team making sure that everything and everybody is in the right place at the right time: the correct people, competencies, equipment, access arrangements and documentation, with everyone fit for work and everything fit for purpose.
On the railway, that planning can be going on around the clock.
Only when all of that is in place can somebody actually go out and manage the vegetation. That’s the bit people see, but in many ways it’s the smallest part of the whole operation.
How has technology changed the way vegetation is managed on the rail network?
Quite significantly, and I think this is one of the most interesting areas of development in our sector.
Railway ballast is classified as a hard surface, but it hasn’t been affected in quite the same way as other areas of hard surface weed control, where many of the residual herbicide technologies we once relied upon are no longer available. So, as far as chemistry is concerned, there are still more options available on the railway.
But the railway is an enormous estate, and that means even a relatively small improvement in efficiency can have a significant impact on the overall resources needed to maintain a safe and efficient network.
Increasingly, both in the UK and across Europe, we’re seeing technologically advanced weed spray trains capable of identifying the difference between clean ballast and areas where weeds are actually present. Rather than treating everything, they can apply herbicide only where it’s needed.
For me, that’s where the future lies. Targeted spot treatment means using less product, reducing unnecessary applications and making much better use of the resources available to us.
And I don’t think that’s just the future of weed control on the railway. I think it’s the future of pesticide application generally.
What role does Integrated Pest Management play in rail vegetation management?
IPM on the railway is quite different from IPM on many other hard surfaces.
On a pavement, for example, you have a number of options. You can decide what level of weed growth is acceptable, use alternatives such as sweeping or thermal treatments, and even look at design and construction techniques that make an area less susceptible to weeds in the first place.
On the railway ballast, most of those options simply aren’t available. Weeds can’t really be tolerated, the construction of the track bed can’t be changed to make weed control easier, and techniques such as hot water, steam or hot foam aren’t realistically suited to treating thousands of miles of operational railway.
On the track itself, Weedfree is really the only option.
So I think the more interesting application of IPM on the railway is when you look beyond the ballast and consider the railway as a whole.
That’s where managing different species appropriately, using different vegetation management techniques and understanding how the lineside interacts with the track become important. The ballast shoulder is particularly significant because that’s where lineside vegetation starts to encroach onto the track bed.
It might mean encouraging grasses and other appropriate vegetation on lower embankments while controlling trees and woody vegetation where they present a risk. Different parts of the railway need different approaches.
For me, that’s where the real integration comes in. It isn’t about trying to eliminate vegetation everywhere. It’s about understanding what vegetation you have, where it is, what risk it presents and managing each part of the railway appropriately.
How important is it that the sector retains access to an effective range of weed management tools?
If by weed management tools we’re primarily talking about herbicides, and particularly glyphosate, then I’d probably look at the question from a slightly different perspective.
We’ve seen many products withdrawn over the 33 years I’ve worked in this industry, and for very good reasons. Society has a responsibility to protect both human health and the environment, and we have regulatory authorities whose job it is to assess the evidence and make those decisions on our behalf.
If a product, when used correctly and in accordance with its label, presents an unacceptable risk to people or the environment, then it shouldn’t be available. I don’t think there’s really an argument to be had about that.
My concern is when decisions about whether a product should remain available start being driven by something other than the evidence.
Glyphosate is probably the obvious example. It must be one of the most researched herbicides in history and has been repeatedly assessed by regulatory authorities around the world. The US EPA, European Food Safety Authority, European Chemicals Agency, Health Canada, Australian regulators and others have not classified glyphosate as carcinogenic when considering its approved uses and the available evidence.
The assessment everybody tends to hear about is from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”. That’s an important scientific assessment and shouldn’t simply be dismissed, but it’s also important to understand that IARC is identifying whether something presents a carcinogenic hazard, rather than assessing the risk from using a product in accordance with its approved conditions.
For me, this isn’t really about defending glyphosate. If the evidence changes and demonstrates that its approved use presents an unacceptable risk, then absolutely, withdraw it.
But equally, if the scientific and regulatory evidence continues to support its safe use, withdrawing an effective tool for political reasons or because of public perception would represent a failure of the regulatory system rather than a success.
We should use less pesticide wherever we reasonably can, target it better and continually look for better alternatives. But the decision about which tools trained professionals are allowed to use should ultimately be based on evidence, science and risk.
What can the wider amenity sector learn from vegetation management on the railway?
Standards.
The railway operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and to a very large extent it works because everything has a standard. And I really do mean everything.
There are standards covering the metalwork holding the rails to the sleepers, signals and lamps, how you cross a line open to trains, how work is planned and carried out, and even how an accident is investigated when something does go wrong.
Of course, things still break and people still make mistakes, but the principle is that everybody knows what is expected, what standard needs to be achieved and how it should be achieved.
I think there’s something the wider amenity sector can learn from that.
I’d love to see the Amenity Standard adopted by all, not as rigid or prescriptive as the railway, but a recognised standard that sets out what good vegetation management actually looks like and the principles we should all be working towards.
The end goal is relatively simple: safe, well-maintained environments, weed free and free draining where that’s necessary, and beautiful, green and blooming everywhere else.
How we achieve that will vary enormously from one environment to another, but an Amenity Standard, adopted by all, would be a very good place to start.
What do you hope to achieve as a Director of the Amenity Forum?
I was elected by the membership of the Amenity Forum to represent them, and ultimately that’s what I hope to achieve.
I don’t think I need a grander ambition than that.
I’ll continue to voice my own opinions, certainly, but more importantly I’ll listen to the views of members and speak on behalf of those who ask me to represent theirs.
The Amenity Forum has a relatively small group of Directors, all chosen by the membership and all tasked with essentially the same responsibility: to represent this incredibly diverse sector and help move it forward.
We won’t always agree with each other, and nor should we. What matters is that different experiences and opinions are heard, discussed and properly represented.
So, I’ll contribute, I’ll ask questions, I’ll challenge things when I think they need challenging, and I’ll support the Forum in promoting a professional, responsible and evidence-led amenity sector.
And I’ll keep doing that for as long as the membership continues to choose me to do it.
