Last week, I attended the Amenity Forum’s annual Conference held at the British Motor Museum, Gaydon, near Coventry. It has been a couple of years since I last attended. It was great to catch up with many colleagues and industry professionals who had made the effort to attend. 

As for delegates, we had around 95 people attending this year’s event. Down significantly to previous years, however, as always, a great programme of speakers to update the attendees about the latest innovations for best practice in the amenity and sports turf sectors.

Addressing and hosting the event was Ian Graham, Amenity Forum chairman and MD of Complete Weed Control. Ian came into the industry buying into the franchise of Complete Weed Control in 1999 and has been a strong advocate of best practices for many years. 

Ian welcomed everybody to the conference and set out the theme of this year’s conference as raising the voice of the Amenity Forum. 

The Amenity Forum is the UK’s industry led voluntary initiative, promoting best practice and the safe and sustainable management of weeds, pests and diseases across this very diverse and important sector.

It is funded by member organisations drawn from all sub sectors of amenity who, through this, demonstrate their commitment to their objectives and ensure the highest professional standards are maintained.

In a changing and rapidly developing world, the importance of amenity spaces and maintaining them correctly has never been greater. The Amenity Forum provides the support, guidance, communication and best practice advice to ensure that those looking after the amenity spaces across the UK are doing so responsibly. 

Everybody at the conference was asked to log onto an app to enable them to answer a few questions that set the tone of the day. The first question was ‘what do you see as the primary purpose of the Amenity Forum?’

The delegates responded with the following :-

• To be the voice of the membership 24.07%
• To protect the interests of the sector 48.15%
• To lobby policy makers 20.37%
• To provide updates to the membership 20.37%

The second question was ‘is Glyphosate an important tool for your organisation?’ - with 100% of the delegates saying it was an essential tool for controlling weeds. 

We then had an update from Mike Potts, acting principal enforcement officer for CRD Chemicals Regulation Division who spoke about he and his team’s role in inspecting reports of poor practice in the use of pesticides. It was then the turn of Dr Jonathan Newman to talk about Glysophate and how safe it is compared to household cleaners.

Other speakers for the morning session included Jane Lakey from DEFRA, Ruth Mann, head of integrated crop technologies Agrii, Dr Neal Evans from the voluntary initiative.

We then had a breakout session where the delegates were asked a number of questions about their thoughts on the role of the Amenity Forum.

  
The Forum said, like all organisations it is important for them to find out what members want from them, and whether they are moving in the right direction, meeting the demands of the members?

After lunch we had further interesting speakers, with Henry Brechelet, ICL, giving a talk about the new definitive invasive weed catalogue produced by ICL.

We then heard from Corrina Urquhart, Lantra, who spoke about the urgent need to bring in a new generation of amenity professionals via a number of new pathway schemes and education programmes being investigated. I have spoken at length with Corrina and we both agree that there is much to be done to entice young people into our industry.

The final speaker of the day was Harry Vollard-Butler, a senior member of the grounds team at Tottenham Hotspur, who gave an insight into the building of the new stadium and work they do on a daily basis to maintain the pitches at both the stadium and training grounds. 

All in all, a productive day and a great opportunity to network with fellow practitioners. I am sure the feedback from the delegates will have been positive and enable the Amenity Forum to move forward and continue to support the sector in the safe provision and use of pesticide products.

And finally, I was hoping to drive home in my favourite, but alas . . .