Serco’s drastic flailing of the water meadow in early May caused widespread dismay and anger. The cutter was set so low that it scuffed the soil, totally destroying the developing grassland habitat and its associated invertebrate communities, raising suspicions about the council’s motives for managing the site so intensively only once the site had been selected for the park and ride extension. Grasses and docks are now regrowing, so that the field no longer appears quite so massacred, but the worry remains that the meadow will be scalped again later in the season, setting back its fragile recovery.