A CASH-strapped council that is axing 2,300 jobs has been cutting the grass in thousands of private gardens for free for years, costing the taxpayer possibly hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Durham County Council, which faced with savings of more than £370m has voted to close care homes, leisure centres and the DLI Museum, put the oversight – the cost of which one councillor put at £4.2m – down to the complex processes of selling off and transferring ex-council houses.

Oliver Sherratt, the council’s interim corporate director of neighbourhood services, said stopping the service would save the authority an estimated £18,000 a year.

But Liberal Democrat Councillor Mark Wilkes said: “This is unbelievable. The council has been cutting the grass of 2,234 households for free for at least six years and didn’t realise or didn’t care about the cost to the public.

“The waste and incompetence at Durham County Council is beyond belief. Durham County Council should apologise that for six years or more it has been doing this at (the) taxpayer’s expense. Truly staggering.”

In most areas of the county, the front gardens of council houses sold under the “right to buy” remained council property – and the council continued to cut the grass.

But in some parts of Durham City, Sedgefield, Wear Valley and Easington, where the county council and its predecessors when County Durham had district councils transferred council houses out of council management and/or ownership, the gardens of some houses were included in the right to buy.

It is this now-private land, outside an estimated 2,234 homes countywide, that has been maintained at public expense.

Mr Sherratt said the council had been working to “differentiate between parcels of land” since 2014 and the areas involved were “relatively small”.

The council is now stopping the service, with effect from when it starts cutting grass again in the spring, and is writing to all householders affected to inform them.

Mr Sherratt said: “We are offering support to any elderly and vulnerable people who may need assistance in making alternative arrangements.”

Anyone affected who needs assistance can call the council on 03000-261-000 or email: help@durham.gov.uk

Cllr Wilkes said: “Assuming just six years of free grass cutting with 16 cuts of grass a year at an average cost of £20 a time to get your lawn cut, the Labour-run council has wasted £4.289m of taxpayers’ money cutting private lawns.

“However, the figure is probably more as the council’s costs are higher and the right to buy started decades ago.”

Mr Sherratt said the cost to the council for previous years would be less than the estimated £18,000-a-year savings as the number of right to buy properties has increased over time.

*Will you be affected by the changes? Contact Mark Tallentire on 0191 3844600.