New Leader of city council calls for withdrawal of legal action over tree-felling programme
Plymouth City Council’s new leader has asked objectors to withdraw their judicial review action over a tree-felling programme the council has now abandoned.
Labour’s Tudor Evans, who replaced a Conservative administration after May’s elections, said conditions set by campaign group STRAW to drop the action were unreasonable and if it did not withdrew them the council would ask the High Court to end proceedings on the basis they had become academic.
The dispute arose from a regeneration plan by the Conservative council that involved felling trees on the city’s Armada Way.
In March an early morning injunction halted the felling but by that time 117 had been chopped down.Then leader Richard Bingley, resigned when he faced a vote of no confidence,
Cllr Evans said the council could not accept STRAW’s conditions.He said: “The city centre is looking awful and whilst we obviously want to move forward with the clean-up of the felled trees and stumps as soon as we can, we don’t want to be held-up any further once that is done.
“The legal action is based on a redundant decision. All it is doing is preventing the council from moving forward with a revised scheme.”
The council claimed STRAW had demanded as the price for dropping its legal action: a commitment to public consultation on the revised scheme at an early enough stage that it will be meaningful; tree preservation orders on the remaining trees; a public statement by the council that it had acted wrongly in felling the trees via an executive order
A Plymouth statement said any public consultation would relate to a future scheme - not the previous one - and “the council does not consider this is relief the claimant could obtain in the proceedings and it's also seeking to commit the council to something, before we know what will be brought forward in terms of redesign.”
The council said it had told STRAW’s solicitor there will be a consultation “but it would not be appropriate as a legal undertaking in this claim”.
Pledging tree preservation orders would be “legally inappropriate”, as the council explained: “Council powers are split between the council and the executive and the two do not overlap.
“The decision challenged here was an executive decision. The making of a tree preservation order, by contrast, is a planning function (with its own statutory procedure) and sits under and flows from council.
“The claimant is asking for the imposition of an obligation on the planning authority without that authority having given it proper consideration. The council considers this to be legally inappropriate. Nor does it flow, in any way, from the claimant’s grounds of claim or the decision under challenge.”
Plymouth said the council felt its change of policy made STRAW’s claim academic but “the council has never suggested to the claimant that it would, or may, concede that the [original] decision was not lawfully taken”.
STRAW has been approached for comment.
Mark Smulian
