VITAL community work to keep rural towns and villages across South Lakeland spick and span will continue – following concerns about a legal grey area.

Cllr Matt Brereton, the Conservative member for rural High Furness, has raised the issue of “third party” working with Cumbria County Council officials.

He said many grassroots councils in places such as Coniston, Hawkshead, Blawith and Subberthwaite, had arrangements which allowed certain community jobs to be done by local people instead of county council staff.

These included parish lengthsmen, planting trees and bulbs, maintaining grass verges or responding to heavy snowfalls or floods – jobs which take place on roadsides.

However last year, the county council launched a review of those arrangements under its Working Together project.

The new approach was designed to “enable and empower” communities to contribute to the upkeep of their local environment through “safe, authorised and well-managed working,” but it required new agreements to be in place.

Cllr Brereton said the agreements allowed for “risk managed activities” to be carried out. However, he was concerned that the new agreements were supposed to be in place by the end of next month.

Cllr Brereton suggested the process had “stalled” and that some parish councils had concerns about the legal implications if the vital community jobs took place without the official paperwork being in place.

The Foxfield-based Conservative councillor said: “This is critical for those parish and town councils trying to plan and account for vital post-winter maintenance, as well tending and controlling weeds and saplings, both on rural byways and in towns and villages.”

However, the county council has said the project is in-hand and communities are allowed to continue doing the work.

Cllr Keith Little, the Labour cabinet member for highways on the county council, said: “We are supporting those local parish councils who want bits of work doing and will continue to do so until we land this project.

“It is on-stream. We are working with the Cumbria Association of Local Councils and have now got two agreements that we can share with the local parish councils on the amount of work they plan to do.”