A recommendation made in Beaconsfield’s town plan to use grasscrete where heavy vehicles ruin grass pavement areas has been rejected.

Volunteer group Vision for Beaconsfield (V4B) spent more than 1,000 hours producing a plan which aims to create a ‘better Beaconsfield’ - listing recommendations for the town council to consider, including installing grasscrete to protect grass areas from lorries.

Grasscrete reinforces verges, preventing lorries and heavy vehicles from churning up the grass when they park on them.

However, the town council’s infrastructure planning advisory group rejected the idea, it was revealed at a planning committee meeting on January 14.

They said: “The group does not recommend that grasscrete should be considered in such circumstances due to safety issues; for example damage to grasscrete could create a hazard unless the foundations were so deep as to be too costly in relation to any benefit.”

The group also said creating grasscreted areas could “encourage vehicles to mount verges” and instead advised people to report “regularly damaged verge areas” to the right authority.

Mike Elliot, vice chairman of the Vision for Beaconsfield steering group, said he was disappointed that the idea is not being pursued, saying it was difficult to know how the town council was progressing with the 64 recommendations that were made to them.

He said: “Grasscrete was one of Vision for Beaconsfield’s recommendations and I support all of the proposals made in that document.

“If some work has been done and it is found that maybe it is not practical, I would be interested to understand the reasons why.”

Two other V4B recommendations were considered by the infrastructure planning advisory group, including notifying authorities of “inadequately maintained” street furniture, such as cables, signs and buildings and drawing up an action plan to ensure new developments do not negatively impact neighbours.

The advisory group recommended that “items requiring attention should continue to be drawn to the attention of the relevant owner or authority” but said it was not a responsibility of the town council.

They also said that creating and maintaining infrastructure records or running a call-centre style logging system for issues was “beyond the remit of the town council” and they did not have the “skilled personnel for such.”

Chair of V4B Douglas Butterfield previously told the Bucks Free Press that he felt the group had been left “in limbo” since the report was handed to the town council in July last year and felt “out of touch” with the town council’s progress with the recommendations.

However town mayor, John Read, reassured them that the council are “looking at [the recommendations] to see if there is a real need or want for them” and that all of them are being considered.