Volunteers have cleared tons of rubbish from a cycle path at Lockwood – including items used to grow cannabis.

Seven employees at insurance firm LV= at Folly Hall joined six West Yorkshire Fire Service personnel and Jeff Keenlyside, of the Greenstreams river improvement project to clear rubbish that had been dumped along a 1km stretch of the cycle path and woodland running alongside the river Holme from Queen’s Mill Road to Lockwood Scar.

The firefighters used specialist equipment to retrieve items left on the steep banking. Rubbish included old carpets and broken fencing.

Jeff Keenlyside

Jeff said: “The clean-up went really well. We got absolutely masses of rubbish out of there. The big problem is the fly-tipping which seems to have got worse. It was a mixture of domestic and commercial waste. We also found plastic sheeting and other paraphernalia used to grow cannabis.”

He said the volunteers from LV= regularly went litter-picking along the cycle path, but the long-running problems with the nearby Hunter’s tip meant the clean-up sessions had been unable to go ahead for several months.

Jeff said: “We are trying to improve the site as a public amenity and as a wildlife corridor – we have already installed bird boxes and bat boxes – as well as maintaining it as a cycle route.”