A conversation the man who decides the fate of Sheffield's street trees, Paul Billington. He is very sure that someone standing within his barriers is a big problem for him but can he explain why he needs to fell that tree?



00:00 "Where a tree needs felling it will be because the engineering solutions in the contract that are paid for won't be appropriate.... The view of the council and Amey will have been that to save the tree will require engineering solutions and cost that are not in the contract."

04:47 The ITP often recommends the use of various engineering solutions. "Invariably it will be an engineering solution that is not in the contract and requires extra money.... The council say no more money on trees."

Yet the results show that the ITP recommended non-funded solutions only 5 times! For 307 trees, the ITP recommended using the engineering solutions in the contract.
[ Ссылка ]

06:22 He says that there will be a big contractual problem at the end of the calendar year when some work is meant to have been completed and tries to blame all delays on people standing under trees. Amey will try to say that the pause in work owing to the Independent Tree Panel and owing to protest are the council's fault. (The contract says that costs owing to protest are Amey's responsibility so what have the council done that would make it become their responsibility...?)

11:05 How he makes decisions: "I've got highways engineers - between us and Amey - and tree people coming out of our ears and they sit down and brief me".

But doesn't seem to have any records he could show for why an individual tree must be felled.

14:20 "The Chelsea Road elm was in the Daily Mail. It's all utter nonsense."

17:48 "We are only taking photographs of people inside barriers. [Handing out pre-injunction letters to old ladies on the street] shouldn't have happened. It should only be people inside the barriers. We make an absolute clear distinction."

20:38 "It's not a tree programme. It's a highways programme."

20:50 "In Nether Edge particularly, if there's not a programme of reprofiling the age of those trees, they will all be wiped out in a short period of time. At the same time."

21:32 He believes there are too many mature trees and not enough young tree and "the population needs replenishing.... It will start to change the age profile of the trees. That's all I'm saying.".
Tree experts disagree.

свернуть