Chainsaw chicanery
Council slammed over dirty tricks used in city’s tree wars
A LABOUR council used subterfuge, lies and underhand tactics to chop down trees residents were battling to protect, an official investigation has ruled.
Chainsaw gangs with a police guard swooped without warning at 5am on a tree-lined street in an extraordinary move slammed by the Ombudsman.
The incident, which caused outrage, was the culmination of a six-year ‘tree wars’ battle that saw thousands of healthy trees felled. Yesterday Sheffield Council was ordered to make an unreserved public apology for its unacceptable behaviour.
The pre-dawn operation in November 2016 saw residents woken by police and cars towed away to enable contractors to fell seven trees – six of which experts had said should be saved.
The council’s decision to reject this advice was deliberately posted on its webundermined site at 4.30am – just 30 minutes before the chainsaw gangs moved in – when protesters trying to prevent the felling would be asleep. It resorted to subterfuge by putting up fake tree-removal notices elsewhere, the report by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman reveals.
Michael King investigated the council following a complaint by resident Alan Robshaw, who has since died.
He concluded the council caused an injustice and criticised tactics used in the relentless pursuit of its controversial felling policy.
Protests began after the council signed a £2.2billion, 25-year private finance deal with Amey in 2012 to manage Sheffield’s street trees. This saw more than 3,000 healthy specimens chopped down.
An independent tree panel, set up to consider removals in advance, was supposed to reassure residents the council was acting in good faith. Yet the council the panel by misrepresenting advice from other experts that it used to justify felling trees. There was also a ‘lack of information’ to explain why trees were condemned.
The council claimed it moved in at 5am on safety advice from police, but an email revealed that police had no input on the timing.
It subsequently promised not to start work before 7am. But in December 2017 another tree removal operation began at 5am, the report revealed.
The council tried to fool the public about its tree-felling procedures, the Ombudsman said. It claimed contractors were required to look at 14 possible options to prevent a tree being axed. In reality, this was not part of the contract and the ‘contractor would never use some of the solutions’.
Mr King said: ‘This case highlights the imperative for councils to act with honesty, openness and transparency – without this people can lose faith in their integrity and not trust they are doing the right thing.’
His report recommended the council should make a public apology – and private one to Mr Robshaw’s family. Chris Rust, of Sheffield Tree Action Groups, said: ‘It’s shocking that so much deception took place. It is very sad that Alan Robshaw, who worked so hard to save our trees, should have died without seeing this report.’
The council struck a peace deal with residents in 2018 and its policy now focuses on saving trees. Mark Jones, the councillor in charge of the new street tree strategy, said: ‘We fully accept the findings of this report and recognise that our approach to managing the city’s street trees needed to change. We got some things wrong.’