COMPLAINTS and comments about Banbury’s parks rose by nearly 150 per cent over the summer, new figures show.

Between May and August there were 171 calls to Banbury Town Council about the town’s 12 parks, compared to 69 over a similar period last year.

Dog fouling and grass-cutting were the most comment complaints, with 27 more about dogs and 18 more about the grass than last year.

There were also 19 more complaints about trees and 12 more complaints about both litter and hedges.

Cllr Colin Clarke said: “The number of issues appear to have gone up considerably and obviously we will do what we can to deal with those. But there are very good reasons for it.”

He said: “We have a different system of reporting complaints. Now when we get a phone call it’s recorded when it’s not necessarily a complaint.

“Also we can’t differentiate between different complaints about the same problem, they all get recorded as different problems.”

He said that the poor weather in the winter also contributed to the summer’s high complaint level.

“Our contractors would start cutting the grass but very often couldn’t get onto a lot of the sites because it was waterlogged. The heavy machinery just churned it up.”

Banbury dog-owner Amanda Morris, 44, said: “As a nation our green spaces are becoming smaller and instead of treasuring them we seem to be trashing them.”

The charity worker added: “People don’t seem to care about it. You can’t see the grass for litter in Spiceball Park and Moorfields Park.”

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