ABSTRACT
The concept of contract grounds maintenance is not new. Many Local Authorities and Government Agencies have been operating with contract labour for some years. On the one hand we have the small rural Parish Council which arranges for a local man, perhaps a farmer, to cut the village green twice a year, often for a nominal sum. At the other extreme there is the Property Services Agency, responsible for the maintenance of airfields, military establishments and Government properties all over the country, with a highly organized system of contract landscape maintenance operating contracts worth, in total, many millions of pounds annually.
