Late night injunction halts Plymouth tree felling
An injunction served in the early hours of yesterday morning (15 March) halted the work of council contractors who had felled 110 trees in Plymouth city centre.
The felling was abandoned at 1am. Plymouth city council said that “all but 16 of the trees due to be felled are now down”, adding that “unfortunately the injunction meant we had to stop work”.
Campaigners who arrived at the Armada Way site to try to stop the felling were surrounded by “scores of security guards, contractors and police officers”, they reported.
The works are part of a regeneration plan for the centre, which aims to create a “more impressive route” from North Cross roundabout through the city centre.
The council revealed in a statement that the final design was changed to include 169 semi-mature new trees to be planted.
The ‘Save the trees of Armada Way’ (STRAW) group said on their website: “The trees the council plan to plant will take decades to achieve anything like we have at the moment”. It added: “These trees are the green lungs of our city".
On the morning after the tree felling, STRAW campaigner Ali White wrote on Facebook: “Our incredible lawyer Alice worked through the night on an injunction, somehow got a judge to sign it and we presented it to Paul Barnard (PCC Strategic, Planning and Infrastructure officer) at 1am.
“This morning the people of Plymouth have woken to the news of what happened and the responses to the scenes on Armada Way were as you'd expect. This despicable decision made by our embarrassment of a council will not be forgotten or forgiven.”
She announced that the group has filed for judicial review.
Alice Goodenough, Harrison Grant Ring Solicitors said: “We were required by the injunction (served at 1am) to file our application for judicial review by Wednesday, and to file a further application for the injunction.” She added: “We had less than 24 hours to do this.”
She said that the key grounds for judicial review, which continue to be worked upon, include that “lots of information from the council was not disclosed” and that it failed to provide a proper environmental impact assessment.
She added: “We made it clear to the Council that it needed to provide an Environmental impact assessment before its decision had been made [to fell the trees].”
A hearing on the injunction has been set for 24th March, which will decide whether it will continue until the Judicial Review has been determined.
A Plymouth City Council spokesperson said: “As there are legal proceedings (including a court hearing next week at which the Council will be seeking to have the interim injunction discharged), it would be inappropriate to make any further comment."
Lottie Winson
