Sheffield City Council publishes apology letter felling healthy trees

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. 

‘We hope that this apology will begin the process of restoring trust and faith. 

‘We would like to specifically apologise to campaigners. We are sorry that they were misrepresented as unrepresentative and primarily concerned with their own streets. 

‘This inaccurate characterisation sowed discord within communities. A lot of people care about our street trees and gave their time and energy to try to protect them for the benefit of the whole city.’

The council went on to say that given March’s inquiry, it has reflected on its behaviour.

It wrote: ‘We have committed to taking the action needed to ensure we learn from the past and never repeat those same mistakes again. 

‘The Inquiry found serious errors of strategic leadership and wisdom of decision making during the dispute. 

‘The errors made were enabled by an unsympathetic culture and problems with the quality of advice, capability, systems and resourcing which were not addressed when they should have been.’

The dispute began in 2012 when the council signed a 25-year deal with firm Amey. 

The deal included the removal and replacement of 17,500 street trees.

Opposition within the community to the felling grew and by 2015, an ‘independent tree panel’ was set up.

But the inquiry found the council misled the panel, the public and the courts over what could be achieved with the money provided by Amey.

Sir Mark Lowcock wrote: ‘From 2016, the council rejected many of the recommendations the ITP made in good faith to save trees. 

‘Setting up an independent panel, misleading it and then ignoring substantial numbers of its recommendations was destructive of public trust and confidence.’ 

He concluded: ‘The dispute did significant harm. 

‘Thousands of healthy and loved trees were lost. Many more could have been. 

‘Sheffield’s reputation was damaged. Public trust and confidence in the council was undermined. It has not been fully rebuilt.’

The apology from Sheffield City Council addresses missed opportunities and inadequate risk assessment, sustained failure of strategic leadership, a culture that was unreceptive to external views and discouraging of internal dissent and a lack of transparency, openness and honesty.

At the end of the apology, the council discussed how it plans to move forwards, adding that five years on it is a very different place. It has set out which actions it will put in place to rebuild public trust in a report.

Lastly it said: ‘We understand that apologies without actions are meaningless.

‘We look forward to working with the residents of Sheffield going forwards, so we can continue our work to be the best we can be. We will listen and learn, we will try and maybe we will fail sometimes. 

‘Failing and making mistakes is a part of life, but refusing to listen and learn is a mistake we can never repeat.’