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‘Green’ Sheffield City Council admits felling thousands of healthy trees during Labour-instigated £2.2billion street ‘improvement’ project


Sheffield City Council has issued a four-page apology to residents after an inquiry found it had behaved dishonestly during a dispute over the felling of healthy trees in the city in a £2.2billion street improvement project.

On March 6, the Sheffield Street Trees Inquiry Report by Sir Mark Lowcock found the council also misled the high court twice during the row – during which elderly residents were arrested and held for eight hours for trying to protect the trees.

In autumn 2016, council contractors dragged residents out of bed to move their cars at 4.45am to begin cutting down trees, before protesters arrived. The scenes were compared to ‘something you’d expect to see in Putin’s Russia’ by former Sheffield Hallam MP Nick Clegg.

The council issued an open apology to residents, particularly to those who campaigned against the unnecessary felling, for its ‘actions during the street trees dispute’.

‘The mistakes the Council made were set out very clearly by Sir Mark Lowcock, they should not have happened, and we apologise for them unreservedly,’ the council wrote.

On another occasion, the council applied for an injunction against Green member Alison Teal – one of its own councillors. She was taken to court for breaching the injunction but found not guilty.

The removal of trees, which became known locally as the ‘chainsaw massacre’, provoked scenes involving protesters, van-loads of police and arrests in some of the city’s leafiest middle-class suburbs.

The police came at five o’clock one Thursday morning, banging on doors to inform bleary-eyed homeowners that they needed to get out of bed and move their cars.

Residents who failed to comply were swiftly punished: within minutes, around ten vehicles were loaded on to lorries and towed away, past road blocks that now prevented access to either end of the street.

Inside this cordon, dissent was crushed. Three people who took umbrage at the pre-dawn raid were slapped in handcuffs, including a thirtysomething man and two grandmothers in their early 70s.

The elderly duo, a retired sociology professor called Jenny Hockey, and her neighbour Freda Brayshaw, a former teacher, were driven to the police station for questioning. It would be eight hours before they were released.

Sir Mark Lowcock concluded that the behaviour of the council ‘amounted to a serious and sustained failure of strategic leadership’.

In the apology, the council wrote: ‘An open apology to all residents of Sheffield, and beyond, for Sheffield City Council’s actions during the street trees dispute We are sorry for the actions that we took during the street trees dispute.

‘We recognise that this full apology, for some, is a long time coming, and we understand that due to the Council’s behaviour, some people will never forgive Sheffield City Council and have lost trust and faith in us.

Read More: Sheffield City Council publishes four-page apology letter after felling thousands of healthy trees during £2.2billion street improvement project