Japanese knotweed specialists in Swansea

Guidance from Swansea Council (City and County of Swansea)

• The council runs its own herbicide treatment service for landowners. When this page was last checked, new quotations were paused for the autumn dieback and due to resume in spring.
• It notes that knotweed in Swansea is found on beaches, along watercourses, in gardens, on derelict land, in graveyards and on railway embankments.
• Knotweed on private land is treated as a private matter. Council tenants should inform their housing officer, and knotweed on council land should be reported to the nature team.

Further information is available on the council's website: Japanese knotweed.

Local background

• Swansea University scientists led by Professor Dan Eastwood began what they call the world's largest knotweed control field trial in 2012, testing 19 methods; the work fed into 2020 changes to Law Society conveyancing forms. (source)
• After a community project mapped knotweed across Clyne Valley Country Park in 2021 and 2022, Swansea Council secured three years of Welsh Government funding to treat it, beginning in 2022. (source)

The law in Wales

As in England, it isn't an offence to have Japanese knotweed on your land, but under section 14 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 it is an offence to plant it or otherwise cause it to grow in the wild. Soil or plant material containing it is likely to be controlled waste, Natural Resources Wales regulates on-site treatment and burial, and councils can use community protection notices where someone's failure to deal with it unreasonably affects people nearby.

See our guidance on Japanese knotweed and the law.