Trees in street are set to be saved after surgeons reduce others to bare trunks

SIX trees may be saved on a Sheffield street if a tree-preservation order is confirmed at a committee hearing next week.

Sheffield Council’s planning and highways committee will discuss the case of the preservation order in Stratford Road, Fulwood, after officials were told 16 mature trees were being felled last October.

According to a report, a community tree officer visited the site and tried to stop the action. However, a number of trees had already been removed or had had major limbs removed to leave a standing stem.

The report added: “It was the recommendation of the assessing officer that, pending further assessment, removal of all of the trees would have a detrimental impact on the area and that a tree-preservation order should be served.”

However, tree surgeons had continued working on the trees and delimbed a further number fronting Tom Lane before eventually finishing work before the time that the order was made and came into effect later that day, the report said.

A subsequent site visit occurred on November 3 to carry out a more thorough inspection of the trees.

The inspection found, the report said, that five of the 10 trees fronting Carsick Hill Crescent “were of insufficient quality to meet the high standard necessary to be included in a defensible preservation order”.

It added: “Four of the trees fronting Tom Lane were also of insufficient quality to be included, due to being left as standing stems by the tree surgeons.”

The order now protects six trees from deliberate damage or removal and the committee is asked to confirm this. If the order is ignored, fines can be handed out.

The document said only the owners of the property in Stratford Road – or those on their behalf – objected to the order on October 30 and then January 18, following a variation in the original order.

They said “the order was served in a storm for no apparent reason” and also “serving an ill-considered preservation order does not encourage people to manage their trees and likely to discourage tree ownership”.