Council’s secret contract for trees revealed
No ‘last resort’ guarantee over felling in city policy
SHEFFIELD CITY Council’s secret contract for the controversial felling of thousands of street trees focuses on minimising maintenance costs while containing no mention of removals only happening as a “last resort” as the authority has repeatedly claimed, The Yorkshire Post can reveal.
The council’s Highway Tree Replacement Policy has been made public today after The Yorkshire
Post requested an internal review of a decision to keep the document secret last month. The removal of thousands of trees and their replacement with saplings is part of a 25-year highways maintenance contract between the council and a company called Amey which started in 2012. Around 6,000 trees have been felled so far.
It was revealed in March the contract contains a target to remove 17,500 of the city’s 36,000 street trees ‘in accordance with the Highway Tree Replacement Policy, unless authority approval has been obtained for deviation from this policy’.
The council subsequently confirmed the contract figure has not been altered but council leader Julie Dore has since said less than 17,500 trees will be removed. Work is currently on hold while a review takes place following a national outcry after dozens of police officers and private security guards were sent out to support operations earlier this year.
The contract policy, which is less than two pages long, contains no mention of the so-called ‘6 Ds’ - the criteria the council had previously said is used for deciding whether to remove trees, assessing if they are deemed to be dead, dying, diseased, dangerous, damaging or ‘discriminatory’ in preventing wheelchairs and prams for using the pavement.
There is also no mention of a series of engineering solutions to save trees that the council previously said could be used under the contract to save threatened trees from felling. Instead, the contract policy focuses on what new saplings are suitable to be used as replacements, with one of the key considerations ‘minimising future maintenance requirements and nuisance’.
It adds that “all tree replacement work shall be carried out in accordance with good arboricultural practice” and that where felling is planned, there should be consultation with residents “to ensure they are fully aware of the replacement proposals”.
Tree campaigner Paul Selby said: “The biggest shock for me is just how short and vague it is. It leaves Amey with huge freedom to do pretty much whatever they want.”
The policy contrasts with the council’s Five Year Tree Management Strategy, which was published in 2016 and says tree-felling is a ‘last resort’, with engineering solutions to save them considered first. But an FOI response has confirmed the contract supersedes the strategy, leading campaigners to describe the latter document as ‘worthless’.
SHEFFIELD CITY Council has been challenged to prove its repeated claims that tree-felling in the city is only done as a “last resort” after it was revealed the previously-secret policy for replacing them contains no such guarantee.
Paul Selby, from the Save Nether Edge Trees group, said the council has been unable to prove that felling is indeed a last resort in the way that has been suggested in the past.
“They should show us the part of the contract that proves felling is a last resort. All the stuff in the public domain at the moment doesn’t,” he said.
Senior officials at Sheffield Council and Amey have repeatedly claimed tree-felling is only carried out as a ‘last resort’ following growing public criticism of the policy.
However, in March this year, Sheffield Council was forced to reveal the contract signed in 2012 contained a previously-undisclosed clause which set a target of removing 17,500 of the city’s 36,000 street trees. It said this work would be in line with the contract’s Highway Tree Replacement Policy, which at that stage was being kept secret.
In April, Sheffield Council rejected an Freedom of Information request by The Yorkshire Post to publish the policy on the grounds it intended to do so at an unspecified future date. Following a request for an internal review of that decision, the council has now published the policy, saying while it believed its original refusal was correct, it had now completed a review of what information could be made public.
The council has previously said it assesses trees against the ‘6 Ds’ criteria - if they are dead, dying, diseased, dangerous, damaging or ‘discriminatory’ in preventing wheelchairs and prams for using the pavement - cited in a tree management strategy published in 2016. But the strategy has subsequently been described as ‘worthless’ by campaigners after an FoI this year confirmed it is superseded by the contract.
The contract policy, which is less than two pages long, makes no mention of felling being a last resort or of there being engineer- ing solutions available to save threatened trees in the way the strategy suggests. It also makes no mention of the criteria used for selecting trees for felling and instead focuses on how new saplings planted as replacements should have minimal future maintenance requirements, with a “preference for small leaves, light foliage/canopy [and] restricting the use of large/fruiting species to appropriate locations”.
In January 2016, Sheffield Council leader Julie Dore said ‘removing trees is a last resort’ in response to concerns about residents not being informed before felling begun in some areas of the city.
A council ‘myth-buster’ press release published in April 2017 to address accusations from campaigners that healthy trees were being removed unnecessarily said this was not the case and ‘tree replacement is always a last resort’.
In December 2017, Councillor Bryan Lodge, the-then cabinet member for environment responsible for overseeing the Streets Ahead contract under which the work is being carried out, wrote an article for the Sheffield Telegraph in which he said: “Trees are only replaced as a last resort. If one of the funded engineering solutions within the contract can be used to retain a tree, it is retained.”
In April 2018, Darren Butt, account director with Amey, told The Independent: “We assess every single tree and only replace them as a last resort.”