Council officer’s estimate on trees too low

A SENIOR Sheffield Council officer in charge of the city’s controversial tree-felling strategy significantly underestimated the number of trees that were due to be felled when giving evidence to a court that resulted in campaigners being handed protest injunctions, The Yorkshire Post can reveal.

Paul Billington, director of culture and environment at Sheffield City Council, provided a witness statement to the High Court in Leeds last summer which said 6,000 trees were to be removed in the city and replaced with saplings as part of a £2.2bn highways maintenance contact with private firm Amey signed in 2012.

It comes after a previously redacted part of the contract published on Friday revealed the contract contains a target to replace 17,500 trees by the end of the contract.

Contained in the witness statement obtained by The Yorkshire

Post, Mr Billington said about 6,000 trees were programmed to be felled between 2012 and December 2017. He added: “For the avoidance of doubt, the vast majority of street trees in Sheffield are being retained (30,000 out of 36,000).”

There is no reference in the rest of Mr Billington’s 17-page witness statement to numbers of other trees to be felled after the

first five years. Mr Justice Males, the judge in the High Court case, subsequently granted the injunctions in August, banning protests taking place directly underneath threatened trees.

He described in his ruling how Mr Billington had explained that Amey had surveyed all 36,000 street trees in Sheffield and recommended to the council which needed to removed, with the authority making the final decision. The judge said: “The result of this process was that about 6,000 trees were identified as requiring removal.”

But on Friday night, the council was forced by the Information Commissioner to publish previously redacted sections of the highways contract linked to felling work which includes a target to replace 17,500 trees, including a contractual obligation to fell “not less than 200 per year”. Sheffield Council today highlighted a press release it had issued in February 2017, prior to the court hearing, which said about 200 trees per year would be replaced over the last 20 years of the contract.

It said that statement was in line with the estimate it published on Friday saying about 10,000 trees will be removed over the course of the 25-year contract, which started in 2012.

Mr Billington’s statement said trees were selected for removal for one of six reasons; if they are either dead, dying, diseased, decaying, damaging to the highway or third-party properties or ‘discriminatory’ – affecting the public’s ability to use the highway. In contrast, campaigners have argued that healthy mature trees were being felled for cost and contractual reasons.

Since the injunctions were granted, two campaigners have been found guilty of breaching them, which is a criminal offence. The pair have been ordered to pay combined legal costs of £27,000 to Sheffield Council.

A spokeswoman for Sheffield Council said: “We have been consistently open about the number of street trees set to be replaced over the duration of the contract, which remains at an estimated 10,000.

“This includes the 6,000 trees identified as requiring removal in the core investment period in the early years of the contract. This figure of 6,000 and the implied figure of 10,000 were confirmed in a press release issued in February 2017, five months prior to the court hearing.”