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Council considered killing healthy trees - report

PA Media Tree felling in SheffieldPA Media
The inquiry was launched after an anti-tree felling campaigner complained about information being withheld
  • Council bosses considered killing thousands of healthy trees to justify cutting them down, a report found
  • Thousands of trees were felled as part of a major street improvement project, sparking public anger and protests
  • An independent review found the authority had misled the public
  • "Serious and sustained failures in leadership" were also identified

Councillors in Sheffield considered killing thousands of healthy trees to justify cutting them down, it has emerged.

The suggestion was made in a email sent in 2018 at the height of the city's tree-felling saga and published as part of an independent inquiry into the events.

About 5,600 trees were removed and replaced between 2013 and 2018 as part of a £2.2bn street improvement project, the report found.

Author Sir Mark Lowcock said a "failure of strategic leadership" was to blame for the fiasco.

The report, published on Monday, revealed that in 2018, Paul Billington, then director of place, sent an email to councillor Bryan Lodge, then head of the programme, summarising options for action with the header "please print and then delete". 

The email suggested resorting to "ring barking" to "defeat" protesters.

The report said ring barking is a method of killing healthy trees by completely skinning the bark around the circumference of the trunk.

"The tree is killed and dies over a number of months. It would move all trees into the 'dying' category and mean that STAG (Sheffield Tree Action Group) could no longer claim they were defending 'healthy' trees." it said.

"It would be unprecedented for a council to adopt this approach across a large number of street trees and would probably result in howls of protest from lay people, the media and an escalation in protests. It would therefore best be done with an element of surprise over a short period of time."

'Defeat the protesters'

At the time, about 5,000 trees had been felled and about 12,500 more were facing the chop. 

In his report, Sir Mark said the suggestions were "indicative of the mindset of a number of important council decision-makers at the time" and "the author's request that the paper and its covering email be deleted from the email system once printed speaks for itself". 

"While the extreme option of ring barking trees is not recommended as the next step, the approach that was recommended involved tactics which had already been shown to have failed and conveys a strong impression that a main objective was to defeat the protesters," he added.

Earlier this week, council leader Terry Fox said the report highlighted areas of "misjudgement, errors and mishandling".

However, he said rather than "hide away" he intended to "face up to this".

The authority's chief executive, Kate Josephs, said those impacted by the long-running dispute would be receiving personal apologies.

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