Trees

Speech to Sheffield City Council given in February 2017

I agree with the petitioners none of us in Walkley want to see healthy mature trees removed and replaced with 15-year-old new ones.

I admire the tree protesters for their tenacity, their campaigning tactics, they way they are committed to their cause, some political parties in this Chamber could learn a lot from them. The tree protestors are focused on their goal, they are committed to that goal, and they use distractions when they are given the truth, they find an alternative truth. They pedal alternative truths when they feel people in the City believe the truth. When all else fails they resort personal attacks on Councillors and Officers, in the last couple of days I’ve been accused of being in the pay of Amey, having may hands in the public purse, of talking ….. well I can’t use the words in this chamber.

I have spent time on Rivelin Valley Road with my comrades looking at the trees under threat, it appears to us that there may be solutions that could be used on some of them. But its obvious that no engineering solutions will resolve the issues of tree roots disrupting the road and pavement.

Last month Mr Dilner announced that there where some undesirable elements who had become involved with STAG. I was reflecting on who he could be referring to and looking across this Chamber I wondered if he might be referring to some Politicians who have a bad habit of jumping on whatever bandwagon is passing them, they jump on a issue use it for their own selfish ends and then abandon their new friends.

When I was first elected, I had several briefings from Officers and Amey about what Street Ahead would be doing in Walkley and across the City. I haven’t read all 7 thousand pages of the contract but I did get a very detailed review of what was in the contract and what wouldn’t be done. It was quite clear that it was a huge amount of work needed to be done to bring the pavements and streets up to standard. It was also clear that the trees where responsible of causing a massive amount of damage to the infrastructure.

We need to bring some sanity to this issue, Sheffield is a City full of trees, at the end of the contract there will be 10s of thousands more trees than we have now, Experts estimate that 8 15 year trees will have the same air filtering ability as one mature street tree so given the number of trees being planted they will by far compensate for the trees lost.

There is a contract in place to renovate all the roads, pavements and street furniture in Sheffield, that contract has a value that has been agreed for 25 years, during that time Sheffield is guaranteed to have the best roads and pavements of any City, the problem we have is that there is no more funding outside of the contract, no more money for extra work, there is no money left for any work not covered by the contract.