WESTBURY mayor Horace Prickett has discovered an outlawed plant growing near the town's mine lakes.

Mr Prickett discovered the 30sqm patch of Japanese Knotweed on Tuesday and reported it to Wiltshire County Council who are legally required to destroy it.

Under the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act it was made illegal to spread the aggressive weed, which stifles wildlife. The 1990 Envi-ronmental Protection Act classed knotweed as controlled waste to which a duty of care applies.

Mr Prickett said: "The knotweed is now about eight feet tall and it's literally strangling everything out there. It was definitely not there last year, it must have grown in the past 10 to 12 weeks.

"It grows at a rate of one and three quarter inches per day and is very serious indeed. The county council has 28 days to clear the infestation. They have already notified their contractors who are dealing with it.

"They have got to harvest it and bury it to a depth of five metres and they should also remove the soil and bury that to the same depth. It only takes one gram of the weed to propagate itself and destroy hedgerows."