Pesticide Usage in Scotland: Local Authority Integrated Weed Control Survey - 2019

Introduction

The Scottish Government (SG) is responsible for post-approval surveillance of pesticide use in Scotland. This is conducted by the Pesticide Survey Unit at SASA, a division of the Scottish Government's Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate.

A survey of Scottish Local Authority (LA) weed control activities during 2019, was conducted. This is the first survey of its kind carried out in Scotland and was designed to inform the Scottish Government about the weed control strategies used by LAs and to address a data gap in relation to pesticide use in urban and non-agricultural settings.

UK level pesticide use in amenity settings, including LAs, is surveyed and published by Fera Science Ltd every four years. The last published UK survey was conducted in 2016⁽¹⁾ with the 2020 survey scheduled to be published in spring 2022. Response rates from LAs to the UK surveys have been historically low (only nine per cent of those contacted contributed data in 2016) and the data is not robust enough to be published at a sub-UK level. Local authorities are responsible for the majority of urban pesticide use, which is mainly focussed on weed control; herbicide use accounted for 99.5 per cent of pesticide use by weight in 2016⁽¹⁾. As a consequence, this survey focussed on weed management practices, including herbicide and non-chemical measures, by Scottish LAs. The aim of this survey was to provide baseline data to understand how herbicides are currently used in these settings. This data can also be used to assess changes in weed control strategies in the future.

The Scottish Pesticide Usage reports have been designated as Official Statistics since August 2012 and as National Statistics since October 2014. As this survey is the first of its kind and has not been formally assessed it has been published as an Official Statistics publication. The Chief Statistician (Roger Halliday) acts as the statistics Head of Profession for the Scottish Government and has overall responsibility for the quality, format, content and timing of all Scottish Government national statistics publications, including the pesticide usage reports. As well as working closely with Scottish Government statisticians, SASA receive survey specific statistical support from Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland (BioSS).

All reports are produced according to a published timetable. For further information in relation to Pesticide Survey Unit publications and their compliance with the code of practice please refer to the pesticide usage survey section of the SASA website. The website also contains other useful documentation such as privacy and revision policies, user feedback and detailed background information on survey methodology and data uses.

Structure of report and how to use these statistics

This report is intended to provide data in a useful format to a wide variety of data users. The results section presents the results from this survey for both herbicide and non-chemical weed control measures.

Appendix 1 contains tables of results, including estimates of herbicide use and responses to questions about integrated weed management practices. Appendix 2 summarises survey statistics including survey response rates. Appendix 3 outlines the estimated financial burden to survey respondents. Appendix 4 defines many of the terms used throughout the report. Appendix 5 describes the methods used during sampling and data collection. A copy of the survey questionnaire which was sent to all LAs is available in Appendix 6.