Tree inquiry: Sheffield Council considered starving thousands of healthy trees to justify felling

The findings of a long-awaited inquiry seeking “truth and reconciliation” following the infamous Streets Ahead programme that aimed to fell 17,500 street trees as part of a £2.2 billion contract between the council and Amey was published this week.

Findings showed the council overstretched its authority in taking drastic action against campaigners, had serious and sustained failures in leadership and misled the public, courts and an independent panel it set up to deal with the dispute.

At the height of the saga 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”.

It included advice given to John Mothersole, then chief executive of the council, and Darren Butt, Amey account director.

It suggested resorting to ring barking to “defeat” protesters, a method of killing healthy trees by completely skinning the bark around the circumference of the trunk. This stops water and nutrients from being able to travel between the roots and top growth.

The email said: “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 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.”

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

The paper suggested taking this method if law enforcement of protests and changing the timeline failed.

It was, however, rejected by Mr Mothersole.

Sir Lowcock 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”.

He added: “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.”